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DIARY OF 
Caroline Cowles Richards 

1852 - 1872 




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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




Beals Homestead 



DIARY OF 

Caroline Cowles Richards 

1852 - 1872 
CANANDAIGUA, N. Y. 




Fond memory brings the light 
Of other days around me. " 



I Tw'. C'j-y-?.',- Received 

' ) 1903 



Copyright, 1908, by 
Caroline Richards Ci.akke 



FOREWORD 



"Dear friends what can I bring to you? 
I fain would offer something new 
At this glad time, but I have naught. 
Not even one new wish, or thought. 

Only the same old love; you know 

I gave it to you years ago. 

Only the memories of old 

That never have grown changed or cold. 

No, I have nothing new: and yet 

I scarcely think I need regret 

That it is so, for you and I 

Have precious things from days gone by. 

But if good wishes, good can bring 
Mine are with you, in everything. 
So take the old love, tried and true 
On from the old years to the new." 

Naples, New York. 



1852 

Canandaigua, N. Y. 

November 21, 1852. — I am ten years old to-day and I 
think I will write a journal and tell who I am and what I am 
doing. I have lived with my Grandfather and Grandmother 
Beals ever since I was seven years old, and Anna, too, since 
she was four. Our brothers, James and John, came too, 
but they are at East Bloomfield at Mr. Stephen Clark's 
Academy. 




"I Was Seven and Anna Was Four" 



Anna and I go to school at District No. 1 1 . Mr. James 
C. Cross IS our teacher, and some of the scholars say he is 
cross by name and cross by nature, but I like him. He gave 
me a book by the name of "Noble Deeds of American 
Women, " for reward of merit, in my reading class. To- 
day, a nice old gentleman, by the name of Mr. William 
Wood, visited our school. He is Mrs. Nat. Gorham's 
uncle, and Wood street is named for him. He had a beau- 
tiful pear in his hand and said he would give it to the boy or 
girl who could spell "virgaloo, " for that was the name of the 



pear. I spelt it that way, but it was not right. A little boy, 
named William Sly, spelt it right and he got the pear. I 
wish I had, but I can't even remember now how he spelt it. 
If the pear was as hard as the name, I don't believe any one 
would want it, but I don't see how they happened to give 
such a hard name to such a nice pear. Grandfather says 
perhaps Mr. Wood will bring in a Seckle pear some day, 
so I had better be ready for him. 




Grandmother Beals 



Grandmother told us such a nice story to-day, I am going 
to write it down in my journal. I think I shall write a book 
some day. Miss Caroline Chesebro does and I don't see 
why I can't. If I do, I shall put this story in it. It is a 
true story and better than any I found in three story books 
grandmother gave us to read this week, "Peep of Day, 
"Line Upon Line," and "Precept Upon Precept," but this 
story was better than them all. One night, grandfather was 
locking the front door at 9 o'clock, and he heard a queer 



sound, like a baby crying. So he unlocked the door and 
found a band box on the stoop and the cry seemed to come 
from inside of it. So he took it up and brought it into 
the dining room and called the two girls, who had just gone 
upstairs to bed. They came right down and opened the box 
and there was a poor little girl baby, crying as hard as could 
be. They took it out and rocked it and sung to it and got 
some milk and fed it and then sat up all night with it, by the 
fire. There was a paper pinned on the baby's dress with her 
name on it, "Lily T. LaMott, " and a piece of poetry called 
"Pity the Poor Orphan. " The next morning, grandfather 
went to the overseer of the poor and he said it should be 
taken to the county house, so our hired man got the horse 
and buggy, and one of the girls carried the baby and they 
took it away. There was a piece in the paper about it and 
grandmother pasted it into her "Jay's Morning and Evening 
Exercises, " and showed it to us. It said "A Deposit After 
Banking Hours." 

"Two suspicious looking females were seen about town m 
the afternoon, one of them carrying an infant. They took a 
train early in the morning without the child. They probably 
secreted themselves in Mr. Deal's yard and if he had not 
taken the box in, they would have carried it somewhere else." 
When grandfather told the clerks in the bank about it next 
morning, Mr. Bunnell, who lives over by Mr. Daggett's, on 
the park, said, if it had been left at some people's houses, it 
would not have been sent away. Grandmother says, they 
heard that the baby was adopted afterwards, by some nice 
people in Geneva. People must think this is a nice place for 
children, for they had eleven of their own, before we came. 
Mrs. McCoe was here to call this afternoon and she looked 
at us and said: "It must be a great responsibility, Mrs. Beals. " 
Grandmother said she thought "her strength would be equal 
to her day." That is one of her favorite verses. She said 
Mrs. McCoe never had any children of her own and perhaps 
that is the reason she looks so sad at us. Perhaps some one 
will leave a band box and a baby at her door some dark 
night. 




Grandfather Beals 



Saturday — Our brother John drove over from East Bloom- 
field to-day to see us and brought Julia Smedley with him, 
who is just my age. John lives at Mr. Ferdinand Beebe's 
and goes to school and Julia is Mr. Beebe's niece. They 
make quantities of maple sugar out there and they brought 
us a dozen little cakes. They were splendid. I offered John 
one and he said he would rather throw it over the fence than 
to eat it. I can't understand that. Anna had the face ache 
to-day and I told her that I would be the doctor and make 
her a ginger poultice. I thought I did it exactly right but 
when I put it on her face she shivered and said: "Carrie, you 
make lovely poultices only they are so cold. " I suppose I 
ought to have warmed it. 

Tuesday — Grandfather took us to ride this afternoon and 
let us ask Bessie Seymour to go with us. We rode on the 
plank road to Chapinville and had to pay 2 cents at the toll 
gate, both ways. We met a good many people and Grand- 
father bowed to them and said, "How do you do, neighbor." 

8 



We asked him what their names were and he said he did not 
know. We went to see Mr. Munson, who runs the mill at 
Chapinville. He took us through the mill and let us get 
weighed and took us over to his house and out into the 
barnyard to see the pigs and chickens and we also saw a 
colt which was one day old. Anna just wrote in her journal 
that "it was a very amusing site." 

Sunday — Rev. Mr. Kendall, of East Bloomfield, preached 
to-day. His text was from Job xxvi, 14: "Lo these are 
parts of his ways, but how little a portion is heard of him." 
I could not make out what it meant. He is James' and 
John's minister. 

Wednesday — Capt. Menteth was at our house to dinner 
to-day and he tried to make Anna and me laugh by snap- 
ping his snuff box under the table. He is a very jolly man, 
I think. 

Thursday — Father and Uncle Edward Richards came to 
see us yesterday and took us down to Mr. Corson's store and 
told us we could have anything we wanted. So we asked 
for several kinds of candy, stick candy and lemon drops and 
bulls eyes, and then they got us two rubber balls and two 
jumping ropes with handles and two hoops and sticks to roll 
them with and two red carnelian rings and two bracelets. 
We enjoyed getting them very much and expect to have 
lots of fun. They went out to East Bloomfield to see James 
and John, and father is going to take them to New Orleans. 
We hate to have them go. 

Friday — We asked Grandmother if we could have some 
hoop skirts like the seminary girls and she said no, we were 
not old enough. When we were downtown Anna bought 
a reed for I cents and ran it into the hem of her underskirt 
and says she is going to wear it to school to-morrow. I think 
Grandmother will laugh out loud for once, when she sees it, 
but I don't think Anna will wear it to school or anywhere 
else. She wouldn't want to if she knew how terrible it 
looked. 

Wednesday, June 8. — Mr. Cross had us speak pieces to- 
day. He calls our names and we walk on to the platform 
and toe the mark and make a bow and say what we have 

9 




"Hoop Skirts Like the Seminary Girls' 



got to say. He did not know what our pieces were going 
to be and some of them said the same ones. Two boys 
spoke: "The boy stood on the burning deck. Whence all but 
him had fled." William Sly was one and he spoke his the 
best. When he said, "The flames that lit the battle wreck 
Shone round him o'er the dead," we could almost see the 
fire, and when he said, "My father, must I stay?" we felt 
like telling him, no, he needn't. He is going to make a good 
speaker. Mr. Cross said so. Albert Murray spoke "Ex- 
celsior, " and Horace Fmley spoke nice, too. My piece was. 
"Why, Phoebe, are you come so soon? Where are your 
berries, child?" Emma Van Arsdale spoke the same one. 
We find them all in our reader. Sometime I am going to 
speak, "How does the water come down at Ladore?" 
Splashing and flashing and dashing and clashing and all that 
— it rhymes so it is easy to remember. 

10 



Tuesday, December 8. — I could not keep a journal for 
two weeks, because grandfather and grandmother have been 
very sick and we were afraid something dreadful was going 
to happen. We are so glad that they are well again. 
Grandmother was sick upstairs and grandfather in the bed- 
room downstairs, and we carried messages back and forth 
for them. Dr. Carr and Aunt Mary came over twice every 
day and said they had the influenza and the inflammation 
of the lungs. It was lonesome for us to sit down to the table 
and just have Hannah wait on us. We had such lumps in 
cur throats we could not eat much and we cried ourselves 
to sleep two or three nights. Aunt Ann Field took us home 




'Aunt Ann Field" 



with her one afternoon to stay all night. We liked the idea 
and Mary and Louisa and Anna and I planned what we 
would play in the evening, but just as it was dark, our hired 
man, Patrick McCarty, drove over after us. He said grand- 



father and grandmother could not get to sleep till they saw 
the children and bid them good night. So we rode home 
with him. We never stayed anywhere away from home all 
night that we can remember. When grandmother came 
downstairs, the first time, she was too weak to walk, so she 
sat on each step till she got down. When grandfather saw 
her he smiled and said to us: "When she will, she will, you 
may depend on't; And when she won't, she won't, and 
that's the end on't." But we knew all the time that he was 
very glad to see her. 

1853 

July. — Hiram Goodrich, who lives at Mr. Myron H. 
Clark's, and George and Wirt Wheeler ran away on Sunday 
to seek their fortunes. When they did not come back every- 
one was frightened and started out to find them. They set 
out right after Sunday School, taking their pennies which had 
been given them for the contribution, and were gone several 
days. They were finally found at Palmyra. When asked 
why they had run away, one replied that he thought it was 
about time they saw something of the world. We heard 
that Mr. Clark had a few moments private conversation with 
Hiram in the barn and Mr. Wheeler the same with his boys 
and we do not think they will go traveling on their own hook 
again right off. Miss Upham lives right across the street 
from them and she was telling little Morris Bates that he must 
fight the good fight of faith and he asked her if that was the 
fight that Wirt Wheeler fit. She probably had to make 
her instructions plainer after that. 

July. — Every Saturday our cousins, Lucilia and Mary and 
Louisa Field, take turns coming to grandmother's to dinner. 
It was Mary's turn to-day, but she was sick and couldn't 
come, so grandmother told us that we could dress up and 
make some calls for her. We were very glad. She told us 
to go to Mrs. Gooding's first, so we did and she was glad 
to see us and gave us some cake she had just made. Then 
we went on to Mr. Greig's. We walked up the high steps 
to the front door and rang the bell and Mr. Alexander came. 
We asked if Mrs. Greig and Miss Chapin were at home and 
he said yes, and asked us into the parlor. We looked at the 

12 



paintings on the wall and looked at ourselves in the long look- 
ing glass, while we were waiting. Mrs. Irving came in first. 
She was very nice and said I looked like her niece, Julie 
Jeffrey. I hope I do, for I would like to look like her. Mrs. 
Greig and Miss Chapin came in and were very glad to see 
us and took us out into the greenhouse and showed us all the 
beautiful plants. When we said we would have to go, they 
said goodbye and sent love to grandmother and told us to 
call again. I never knew Anna to act as polite as she did 
to-day. Then we went to see Mrs. Judge Phelps and Miss 
Eliza Chapin, and they were very nice and gave us some 
flowers from their garden. Then we went on to Miss Caro- 
Ime Jackson's, to see Mrs. Holmes. Sometimes she is my 
Sunday School teacher, and she says she and our mother 
used to be great friends at the seminary. She said she was 
glad we came up and she hoped we would be as good as 
our mother was. That is what nearly everyone says. On 
our way back, we called on Mrs. Dana at the Academy, as 
she is a friend of grandmother. She is Mrs. Noah T. Clarke's 
mother. After that, we went home and told grandmother 
we had a very pleasant time calling on our friends and they 
all asked us to come again. 

Sunday, August 15. — To-day the Sacrament of the 
Lord's Supper was held in our church and Mr. Daggett bap- 
tized several little babies. They looked so cunning when he 
took them in his arms and not one of them cried. I told 
grandmother, when we got home, that I remembered when 
Grandfather Richards baptized me in Auburn, and when he 
gave me back to mother, he said, "Blessed little lambkin, 
you'll never know your grandpa." She said I was mistaken 
about remembering it, for he died before I was a year old, 
but I had heard it told so many times I thought I remembered 
it. Probably that is the way it was, but I know it happened. 

Tuesday — Grandfather took us down street to be meas- 
ured for some new patten leather shoes at Mr. Ambler's. 
They are going to be very nice ones for best. We got our 
new summer hats from Mrs. Freshour's millinery and we 
them over to show to Aunt Ann and she said they were the 
very handsomest bonnets she had seen this year. 

13 



We go to school to Miss Zilpha Clark in her own house 
on Gibson Street. Other girls who go are Laura Chapin, 
Julia Phelps, Mary Paul, Bessie Seymour, Lucilla and Mary 
Field, Louisa Benjamin, Nannie Corson, Kittie Marshall, 
Abbie Clark and several other girls. I like Abbie Clark the 
best of all the girls in school excepting of course my sister 
Anna. 

Before I go to school every morning I read three chapters 
in the Bible. I read three every day and five on Sunday and 
that takes me through the Bible in a year. Those I read this 
morning were the first, second and third chapters of Job. The 
first was about Eliphaz reproveth Job; second. Benefit of 
God's correction; third. Job justifieth his complaint. I then 
learned a text to say at school. I went to school at quarter to 
nine and recited my text and we had prayers and then pro- 
ceeded with the business of the day. Just before school was 
out, we recited in "Science of Things Familiar, " and in Dic- 
tionary, and then we had calisthenics. 

We go through a great many figures and sing "A Life on 
the Ocean Wave, " "What Fairy Like Music Steals Over 
the Sea," "Lightly Row, Lightly Row, O'er the Glassy 
Waves We Go," and "O Come, Come Away," and other 
songs. Mrs. Judge Taylor wrote one song on purpose for us. 

November 22. — I wrote a composition to-day and the sub- 
ject was, "Which of the Seasons Is the Pleasantest?" Anna 
asked grandmother what she should write about and grand- 
mother said she thought "A Contented Mind" would be a 
very good subject, but Anna said she never had one and 
didn't know what it meant, so she didn't try to Write any at 



A squaw walked right into our kitchen to-day with a 
blanket over her head and had beaded purses to sell. 

This is my composition which I wrote: "Which of the 
seasons is the pleasantest? Grim winter with its cold snows 
and whistling winds, or pleasant spring with its green grass 
and budding trees, or warm summer with its ripening fruit 
and beautiful flowers, or delightful autumn with its golden 

14 



fruit and splendid sunsets? I think that I like all the seasons 
very well. In winter comes the blazing fire and Christmas 
treat. Then we can have sleigh rides and play in the snow 
and generally get pretty cold noses and toses. In spring wc 
have a great deal of rain and very often snow and therefore 
we do not enjoy that season as much as we would if it was 
dry weather, but we should remember that April showers 
bring May flowers. In summer we can hear the birds warb- 
ling their sweet notes m the trees and we have a great many 
strawberries, currants, gooseberries and cherries, which I like 
very much, indeed, and I think summer is a very pleasant 
season. In autumn we have some of our choicest fruits, such 
as peaches, pears, apples, grapes and plums and plenty of 
flowers in the former part, but m the latter, about in Novem- 
ber, the wind begins to blow and the leaves to fall and the 
flowers to wither and die. Then cold winter with its sleigh- 
rides comes round again." After I had written this I went 
to bed. Anna tied her shoe strings in hard knots so she 
could sit up later. 

November 23. — We read our compositions to-day and 
Miss Clark said mine was very good. One of the girls had a 
Prophecy for a composition and told what we were all going 
to be when we grew up. She said Anna Richards was 
going to be a missionary and Anna cried right out loud. I 
tried to comfort her and told her it might never happen, so 
she stopped crying. 

November 24. — Three ladies visited our school to-day. 
Miss Phelps, Miss Daniels and Mrs. Clark. We had calis- 
thenics and they hked them. 

Sunday. — Mr. Tousley preached to-day. Mr. Lamb is 
Superintendent of the Sunday School. Mr. Chipman used 
to be. Miss Mollie Ball played the melodeon. Mr. Fair- 
child IS my teacher when he is there. He was not there to- 
day and Miss Mary Howell taught our class. I wish I 
could be as good and pretty as she is. We go to church 
morning and afternoon and to Sunday School, and learn 
seven verses every week and recite catechism and hymns to 
grandmother in the evening. Grandmother knows all the 

15 



questions by heart, so she lets the book lie in her lap and 
she asks them with her eyes shut. She likes to hear us sing, 

'Tis religion that can give 
Sweetest pleasures while we live 
'Tis religion can supply 
Solid comfort when we die. " 

December 1 .- — Grandfather asked me to read President 
Pierce's message aloud to him this evening. I thought it was 
very long and dry, but he said it was interesting and that I 
read it very well. I am glad he liked it. Part of it was 
about the Missouri Compromise and I didn't even know 
what it meant. 

December 8. — We are taking dictation lessons at school 
now. Miss Clark reads to us from the "Life of Queen 
Elizabeth " and we write it down m a book and keep it. 
She corrects it for us. I always spell "until" with two I's 
and she has to mark it every time. I hope I will learn how 
to spell it after a while. 

December 9, Saturday. — We took our music lessons to- 
day. Miss Hattie Heard is our teacher and she says we are 
getting along well. Anna practiced her lesson over sixty-five 
times this morning before breakfast and can play "Mary to 
the Savior's Tomb" as fast as a waltz. 

1854 

February 4. — We heard to-day of the death of our little 
half-sister, Julia Dey Richards, in Penn Yan, yesterday, and 
I felt so sorry I couldn't sleep last night, so I made up some 
verses about her and this morning v^rote them down and 
gave them to grandfather. He liked them so well he wanted 
me to show them to Miss Clark and ask her to revise them. 
I did and she said she would hand them to her sister Mary 
to correct. When she handed them back they were very 
much nicer than they were at first and grandfather had me 
copy them and he pasted them into one of his Bibles to keep. 

March 4. — Anna and I went to call on Miss Upham to- 
day. She is a real old lady and lives with her niece, Mrs. 
John Bates, on Gibson Street. Our mother used to go to 

16 



school to her at the Seminary. Miss Upham said to Anna, 
"Your mother was a lovely woman. You are not at ail 
like her, dear." I told Anna she meant in looks I was sure, 
but Anna was afraid she didn't.- 




Miss Upham 

Sunday. — Mr. Daggett's text this morning was the 22d 
chapter of Revelation, 1 6th verse, "I am the root and off- 
spring of David and the bright and morning star." Mrs. 
Judge Taylor taught our Sunday School class to-day and 
she said we ought not to read our S. S. books on Sunday. 
I always do. Mine to-day was entitled, "Cheap Repository 
Tracts by Hannah More," and it did not seem unreligious 
at all. 

May 1 . — I arose this morning about the usual time and 
read my three chapters in the Bible and had time for a walk 
m the garden before breakfast. The polyanthuses are just 
beginnmg to blossom and they border all the walk up and 

17 



down the garden. I went to school at quarter of nine, but 
I did not get along very well because we played too much. 
We had two new scholars to-day. Miss Archibald and Miss 
Andrews, the former about 1 7 and the latter about 15. In 
the afternoon old Mrs. Kmney made us a visit, but she did 
not stay very long. In dictionary class I got up sixth, although 
I had not studied my lesson very much. 

May 2. — I got up this morning at twenty minutes after 
five. I always brush my teeth every morning, but I forget 
to put it down here. I read my three chapters in Job and 
played in the garden and had time to read grandmother a 
piece in the paper about some poor children in New York. 
Anna and I went over to Aunt Ann's before school and she 
gave us each two sticks of candy apiece. Part of it came 
from New York and part from Williamstown, Mass., where 
Henry goes to college. Ann Eliza is going down street with 
us this afternoon to buy us some new summer bonnets. They 
are to be trimmed with blue and white and are to come to 
five dollars. We are going to Mr. Stannard's store also, to 
buy us some stockings. I ought to buy me a new thimble and 
scissors, for I carried my sewing to school to-day and they 
were inside of it very carelessly and dropped out and got 
lost. I ought to buy them with my own money, but I 
haven't got any, for I gave all I had (2 shillings) to Anna 
to buy Louisa Field a cornelian ring. Perhaps father will 
send me some money soon, but I hate to ask him for fear he 
will rob himself. I don't like to tell grandfather how very 
careless I was, though I know he would say, "Accidents will 
happen." 

May 3. — I was up early this morning because a dress- 
maker. Miss Willson, is coming to make me a new calico 
dress. It is white with pink spots in it and grandfather bought 
it in New York. It is very nice indeed and I think grand- 
father was very kind to get it for me. I had to stay at home 
from school to be fitted. I helped sew and run my dress 
skirt around the bottom and whipped it on the top. I went 
to school in the afternoon, but did not have my lessons very 
well. Miss Clark excused me because I was not there in the 
morning. Some girls got up on our fence to-day and walked 
clear across it, the whole length. It is iron and very high 

18 



and has a stone foundation. Grandmother asked them to 
get down, but I think they thought it was more fun to walk 
up there than it was on the ground. The name of the little 
girl that got up first was Mary Lapham. She is Lottie Lap- 
ham's cousin. I made the pocket for my dress after I got 
home from school and then grandfather said he would take 
us out to nde, so he took us way up to Thaddeus Chapin's 
on the hill.. Julia Phelps was there, playing with Laura 
Chapin, for she is her cousin. Henry and Ann Eliza Field 
came over to call this evening. Henry has come home from 
Williams college on his vacation and he is a very pleasant 
young man, indeed. I am reading a continued story in Har- 
per's magazine. It is called Little Dorritt, by Charles Dick- 
ens, and is very interesting. 

May, Friday. — Miss Clark told us we could have a pic- 
nic down to Sucker brook this afternoon and she told us to 
bring our rubbers and lunches by two o'clock; but grand- 
mother was not willing to let us go; not that she wished to 
deprive us of any pleasure for she said instead, we could 
wear our new black silk basks and go with her to Preparatory 
lecture, so we did, but when we got there we found that 
Mr. Daggett was out of town so there was no meeting. Then 
she told us we could keep dressed up and go over to Aunt 
Mary Carr's and take her some apples, and afterwards grand- 
father took us to ride to see old Mrs. Sanborn and old Mr. 
and Mrs. Atwater. He is ninety years old and blind and 
deaf, so we had quite a good time after all. 

Tuesday. — When we were on our way to school this 
morning we met a lot of people and girls and boys going to 
a picnic up the lake. They asked us to go, loo, but we said 
we were afraid we could not. Mr. Alex Howell said, "Tell 
your grandfather I will bring you back safe and sound unless 
the boat goes to the bottom with all of us." So we went 
home and told grandfather and, much to our surprise, he said 
we could go. We had never been on a boat or on the lake 
before. We went up to the head on the steamer Joseph 
Wood and got off at Maxwell's Point. They had a picnic 
dinner and lots of good things to eat. Then we all went into 
the glen and climbed up through it. Mr. Alex Howell and 
Mrs. Wheeler got to the top first and everybody gave three 

19 



cheers. We had a lovely time riding back on the boat and 
told grandmother we had the very best time we ever had in 
our whole lives. 

May 26. — There was an eclipse of the sun to-day and we 
were very much excited looking at it. General Granger 
came over and gave us some pieces of smoked glass. Miss 
Clark wanted us to write compositions about it so Anna 
wrote, "About 1 1 o'clock we went out to see if it had come 
yet, but it hadn't come yet, so we waited awhile and then 
looked again and it had come, and there was a piece of it 
cut out of it. " Miss Clark said it was a very good descrip- 
tion and she knew Anna wrote it all herself. 

I handed in a composition, too, about the eclipse, but I 
don't think Miss Clark liked it as well as she did Anna's, 
because it had something in it about "the beggarly elements 
of the world." She asked me where I got it and I told her 
that it was in a nice story book that grandmother gave me to 
read, entitled, "Elizabeth Thornton or the Flower and Fruit 
of Female Piety, and other sketches," by Samuel Irenaeus 
Prime. — This was one of the other sketches. — It commenced 
by telling how the moon came between the sun and the earth, 
and then went on about the beggarly elements. Miss Clark 
asked me if I knew what they meant and I told her no, but 
I thought they sounded good. She just smiled and never 
scolded me at all. I suppose next time I must make it all up 
myself. 

Monday. — When we were on our way to school this 
morning, we saw General Granger coming, and Anna had 
on such a homely sunbonnet she took it off and hid it behind 
her till he had gone by. When we told grandmother, she 
said, "Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit 
before a fall." I never heard of any one who knew so many 
Bible verses as grandmother. Anna thought she would be 
sorry for her and get her a new sunbonnet, but she didn't. 

Sunday, June. — We have Sunday School at 9 o'clock 
in the morning now. Grandfather loves to watch us when 
we walk off together down the street, so he walks back and 
forth on the front walk, till we come out, and gives us our 
money for the contribution. This morning we had on our 
new white dresses that Miss Rosewarne made and new sum- 

20 



mer hats and new patten leather shoes and our mitts. When 
he had looked us all over, he said, with a smile, "The Bible 
says, let your garments be always white." After we had 
gone on a little ways, Anna said: "If grandmother had 
thought of that verse, I wouldn't have had to wear my pink 
barege dress to the concert." I told her she need not feel 
bad about that now, for she sang as well as any of them and 
looked just as good. She always believes everything I say, 
although she does not always do what I tell her to. Mr. 
Noah T. Clarke told us in Sunday School last Sunday that 
if we wanted to take shares in the missionary ship, "Morning 
Star," we could buy them at 10 cents apiece, and grand- 
mother gave us $ 1 to-day so we could have 1 shares. We 
got the certificate with a picture of the ship on it, and we are 
going to keep it always. Anna says if we pay the money, 
we don't have to go. 




Noah T. Clarke 

There is a Mr. Packer in town, who teaches all the chil- 
dren to sing. He had a concert in Bemis Hall last night 
and he put Anna on the top row of the pyramid of beauty 
and about one hundred children in rows below. She ought 

21 



to have worn a white dress as the others did but grand- 
mother said her new pink barege would do. I curled her 
hair all around in about thirty curls and she looked very nice. 
She waved the flag in the shape of the letter S and sang 
"The Star Spangled Banner," and all the others joined in 
the chorus. It was perfectly grand. 

June. — Our cousin, George Bates of Honolulu, came to 
see us to-day. He has one brother, Dudley, but he didn't 
come. George has just graduated from college and is going 
to Japan to be a doctor. He wrote such a nice piece in my 
album I must copy it, "If I were a poet, I would celebrate 
your virtues in rhyme; if I were forty years old, I would 
write a homily on good behavior; being neither, I will quote 
two familiar lines which if taken as a rule of action, will 
make you a good and happy woman : 

"Honor and shame from no condition rise. 
Act well your part, there all the honor lies." 

I think he is a very smart young man and will make a good 
doctor to the heathen. 

Tuesday. — A gentleman visited our school to-day and 
Miss Clark introduced iriim to us. When he came in. Miss 
Clark said, "Young ladies," and we all stood up and bowed 
and said in concert, his name. Grandfather says, he would 
rather have us go to school to Miss Clark than anyone else, 
because she teaches us manners, as well as books. We girls 
think he is a very particular friend of Miss Clark. He is 
very nice looking, but we don't know where he lives. Laura 
Chapin says he is an architect. I looked it up in the dic- 
tionary and it says one who plans or designs. I hope he 
don't plan to get married to Miss Clark and take her away 
and break up the school, but I presume he does, lor that is 
usually the way. 

Monday. — There was a minister preached in our church 
last night and some people say he is the greatest minister in 
the world. I think his name was Mr. Finney. Grand- 
mother said I could go with our girl, Hannah White. We 
sat under the gallery, in Miss Antoinette Pierson's pew. 
There was a great crowd and he preached good. Grand- 



mother says that our mother was a Christian when she was 
ten years old and jomed the church and she showed us some 
sermons that mother used to write down when she was 1 7 
years old, after she came home from church, and she has 
kept them all these years. I think children in old times were 
not as bad as they are now. 




"Mrs. Judge Taylor' 



Tuesday. — Mrs. Judge Taylor sent for me to come over 
to see her to-day. I didn't know what she wanted, but when 
I got there she said she wanted to talk and pray with me on 
the subject of religion. She took me into one of the wings. 
I never had been in there before and was frightened at first, 
but it was nice after I got used to it. After she prayed, she 
asked me to, but I couldn't think of anything but "Now I 
lay me down to sleep, " and I was afraid she would not like 
that, so I didn't say anything. When I got home and told 
Anna, she said, "Caroline, I presume probably Mrs. Taylor 
wants you to be a missionary, but I shan't let you go. " I 
told her she needn't worry for I would have to stay at home 
and look after her. After school to-night I went out into 
Abbie Clark's garden with her and she taught me how to 
play "mumble te peg." It is fun, but rather dangerous. I 



am afraid grandmother won't give me a knife to play with. 
Abbie Clark has beautiful pansies in her garden and gave me 
some roots. 

Wednesday, August. ^ — Grandmother sent Anna and me 
up to Butcher street after school to-day to mvite Chloe to 
come to dinner. I never saw so many black people as there 
are up there. We saw old Loyd and black Jonathan and 
Dick Valentine and Jerusha and Chloe and Nackie. Nackie 
was pounding up stones into sand, to sell, to scour with. 
Grandmother often buys it of her. I think Chloe was sur- 
prised, but she said she would be ready, to-morrow, at 1 1 
o'clock, when the carriage came for her. I should hate to be 
as fat as Chloe. I think she weighs 300. She is going to sit 
in grandfather's big arm chair, grandmother said. We told 
grandmother we should think she would rather invite white 
ladies, but she said Chloe was a poor old slave and as grand- 
father had gone to Saratoga, .she thought it was a good time 
to have her. She said God made of one blood all the people 
on the face of the earth, so we knew she would do it and we 
didn't say any more. When we talk too much, grandfather 
always says N. C. (nuff ced.) She sent a carriage for 
Chloe and she came and had a nice dinner, not in the kitchen 
either. Grandmother asked her if there was any one else 
she would like to see before she went home and she said. 
"Yes, Miss Rebekah Gorham, " so she told the coachman 
to take her down there and wait for her to make a call and 
then take her home and he did. Chloe said she had a very 
nice time, so probably grandmother was all right as she gen- 
erally is, but I could not be as good as she is, if I should try 
one hundred years. 

Sunday, August 1 0. — Rev. Mr. Daggett's text this morn- 
ing was "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." 
Grandmother said she thought the sermon did not do us 
much good, for she had to tell us several times this after- 
noon to stop laughing. Grandmother said we ought to be 
good Sundays if we want to go to heaven, for there it is one 
eternal Sabbath. Anna said she didn't want to be an angel 
just yet and I don't think there is the least danger of it, as far 
as I can judge. Grandmother said there was another verse, 
"If we do not have any pleasure on the Sabbath, we shall 

24 



ride on the high places of the earth," and Anna said she 
liked that better, for she would rather ride than do anything 
else, so we both promised to be good. Grandfather told us 
they used to be more strict about Sunday than they are now. 
Then he told us a story, how he had to go to Geneva one 
Saturday morning in the stage and expected to come back 
in the evening, but there was an accident, so the stage did 
not come till Sunday morning. Church had begun and he 
told the stage driver to leave him right there, so he went in 
late and the stage drove on. The next day he heard that he 
was to come before the minister, Rev. Mr. Johns, and the 
deacons and explain why he had broken the fourth com- 
mandment. When he got into the meeting Mr. Johns 
asked him what he had to say, and he explained about the 
accident and asked them to read a verse from the 8th chap- 
ter of John, before they made up their minds what to do to 
him. The verse was, "Let him that is without sin among 
you cast the first stone." Grandfather said they all smiled, 
and the minister said the meeting was out. Grandfather 
says that shows it is better to know plenty of Bible verses, 
for some time they may do you a great deal of good. We 
then recited the catechism and went to bed. 

August 21, I 854. — Anna says that Alice Jewett feels 
very proud because she has a little baby brother. They have 
named him John Harvey Jewett after his father, and Alice 
says when he is bigger she will let Anna help her take him 
out to ride in his baby carriage. I suppose they will throw 
away their dolls now. 

"Old Alice" came to see us to-day and grandmother gave 
her some flowers. She had them in her apron for she said 
if she should meet any little children and they should ask 
for them she would have to let them go. Mrs. Gooding was 
at our house to-day and made a carpet. We went over to 
Aunt Mary Carr's this evening to see the gas and the new 
chandeliers. They are bronze. 

Tuesday, September I, 1854. — I am sewing a sheet over 
and over for grandmother and she puts a pin in to show me 
my stint, before I can go out to play. I am always glad 
when I get to it. I am making a sampler, too, and have all 

2.S 



the capital letters worked and now will make the small ones. 
It is done in cross stitch on canvas with different color silks. 
I am going to work my name, too. I am also knittmg a tip- 
pet on some wooden needles that Henry Carr made for me. 
Grandmother has ravelled it out several times because I 
dropped stitches. It is rather tedious, but she says, "If at 
first you don't succeed, try, try again. " Some military sol- 
diers went by the house to-day and played some beautiful 
music. Grandfather has a teter and swing for us in the back 
yard and we enjoy them usually, but to-night Anna slid off 
the teter board when she was on the ground and I was in 
the air and I came down sooner than I expected. There 
was a hand organ and monkey going by and she was in a 
hurry to get to the street to see it. She got there a good 
while before I did. 

October, 1854. — Grandmother told us a story to-day, 
how when she was a little girl, down in Connecticut, in 1 794, 
she was on her way to school one morning and she saw an 
Indian coming and was so afraid, but did not dare run for 
fear he would chase her. So she thought of the word sago, 
which means "good morning, " and when she got up close 
to him, she dropped a curtesy and said "Sago," and he 
just went right along and never touched her at all. She says 
she hopes we will always be polite to everyone, even to 
strangers. 

November. — Abbie Clark's father has been elected Gov- 
ernor and she is going to Albany to live for a while. We all 
congratulated her when she came to school this morning, but 
I am sorry she is going away. We will write to each other 
every week. She wrote a prophecy and told the girls what 
they were going to be and said I should be mistress of the 
White House. I think it will happen, about the same time 
that Anna goes to be a missionary. 

Rev. Mr. Dickey, of Rochester, agent for the Seaman's 
Friend society, preached this morning about the poor little 
canal boy. His text was from the 107th Psalm, 23rd verse, 
"They that go down into the sea in ships." He has the 
queerest voice and stops off between his words. When we 
got home, Anna said she would show us how he preached 

26 




Governor Myron H. Clark 

and she described what he said about a sailor in time of war. 
She said, "A ball came — and struck him there — another ball 
came — and struck him there — he raised his faithful sword — 
and went on — to victory — or death." I expected grand- 
father would reprove her, but he just smiled a queer sort of 
smile and grandmother put her handkerchief up to her face, 
as she always does when she is amused about anything. I 
never heard her laugh out loud, but I suppose she likes funny 
things as well as anybody. She did just the same, this morn- 
ing, when grandfather asked Anna where the sun rose, and 
she said "over by Gen. Granger's house and sets behind the 
Methodist church." She said she saw it herself and should 
never forget it when anyone asked her which way was east 
or west. I think she makes up more things than anyone I 
know of. 

December, 1854. — There was a moonlight sleigh ride 
of boys and girls last night, but grandfather did not want us 
to go, but to-night he said he was going to take us to one 
himself. So after supper he told Mr. Piser to harness the 
horse to the cutter and bring it around to the front gate. Mr. 



Piser takes care of our horse and the Methodist church. He 
hves in the basement. Grandfather sometimes calls him 
Shakespeare to us, but I don't know why. He doesn't look 
as though he could write poetry. Grandfather said he was 
gomg to take us out to Mr. Waterman Powers' m Farmmg- 
ton and he did. They were quite surprised to see us, but 
very glad and gave us apples and doughnuts and other good 
things. We saw Anne and Imogene and Morey and one 
little girl named Zimmie. They wanted us to stay all night, 
but grandmother was expecting us. We got home safe 
about ten o'clock and had a very nice time. We never sat 
up so late before. 

Sunday. — Rev. M. L. R. P. Thompson preached to- 
day. He used to be the minister of our church before Mr. 
Daggett came. Some people call him Rev. "Alphabet" 
Thompson, because he has so many letters in his name. He 
preached a very good sermon from the text, "Dearly be- 
loved, as much as lieth in you live peaceably with all men." 
I liked to hear him preach, but not as well as I do Mr. Dag- 
gett. I suppose I am more used to him. 

Thursday. — Edward Everett, of Boston, lectured in our 
church this evening. They had a platform built even with 
the tops of the pews, so he did not have to go up into the 
pulpit. Crowds and crowds came to hear him from all over 
everywhere. Grandmother let me go. They say he is the 
most eloquent speaker in the U. S., but I have heard Mr. 
Daggett when I thought he was just as good. 

Sunday. — We went to church to-day and heard Rev. 
Mr. Stowe preach. His text was, "The poor ye have with 
you always and whensoever ye will ye may do them good." 
I never knew anyone who liked to go to church as much as 
grandmother does. She says she "would rather be a door- 
keeper in the house of our God than to dwell m the tents 
of wickedness." I cannot imagine grandmother doing either. 
I know she would not dwell a minute in a tent of any kind 
and they never have women for doorkeepers. Mr. Colbum 
is the doorkeeper in our church and he rings the bell every 
day at 9 in the morning and at 1 2 and at 9 in the evening, 
so grandfather knows when it is time to cover up the fire in 

28 





the fireplace and go to bed. I think if the President should 
come to call, he would have to go home at 9 o'clock. 
Grandfather's motto is: 

"Early to bed and early to rise 
Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." 

Tuesday. — Mrs. Greig and Miss 
Betsey Chapin called to see us to- 
day. Grandmother says that we can 
return the call as she does not visit 
any more. We would like to, for 
we always enjoy dressing up and 
making calls. Anna and I received 
two black veils m a letter to-day 
from Aunt Caroline Dey. Just ex- 
actly what we had wanted for a 
long while. Uncle Edward sent us 
5 dollars and grandmother said we 
could buy just what we wanted, so 
we went down street to look at black 
silk mantillas. We went to Moore'e 
store and to Richardson's and to 
Collier's, but they asked 10, 1 5 or 

20 dollars for them, and Anna said "Black Silk Mantillas" 
she resolved from now, henceforth and forever not to spend 
her money for black silk mantillas. 

Sunday. ^ — Rev. Mr. Tousley preached to-day to the chil- 
dren and told us how many steps it took to be bad. I think 
he said lying was first, then disobedience to parents, breaking 
the Sabbath, swearing, stealing, drunkenness. I don't re- 
member just the order they came. It was very interesting, 
for he told lots of stories and we sang a great many times. 
I should think Eddie Tousley would be an awful good boy 
with his father in the house with him all the while, but prob- 
ably he has to be away part of the time preaching to other 
children. Eddie was named for Dr. Carr and he gave him 
a silver fork. I don't think I should have given him anything 
quite so nice if it had been me. 

Sunday. — Uncle David Dudley Field and his daughter, 
Mrs. Brewer, of Stockbridge, Mass., are visiting us and he 

29 



<5S 



preached for Mr. Daggett this afternoon. He is a very old 
man and left his sermon at home and I had to go back after 
it. His brother, Timothy, was the first minister in our church 
about fifty years ago. Grandmother says she came all the 
way from Connecticut with him on horseback on a pillion be- 
hind him. Rather a long ride, I should say. I heard her 
and Uncle David talking about their childhood and how they 
lived in Guilford, Conn., in a house that was built upon a 
rock. That was sometime in the last century like the house 
that it tells about in the Bible that was built on a rock. 

December. — My three chapters that I read this morning 
were about Josiah's zeal and reformation; 2d, Jerusalem 
taken by Nebuchadnezzar. 3rd, Jerusalem besieged and 
taken. The reason that we always read the Bible the 
first thing in the morning is because it says in the Bible 
"Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and 
all these things shall be added unto you." Grandmother 
says she hopes we will treasure up all these things in our 
hearts and practice them in our lives. I hope so, too. This 
morning Anna got very mad at one of the girls and grand- 
mother told her she ought to return good for evil and heap 
coals of fire on her head. Anna said she wished she could 
and burn her all up, but I don't think she meant it. I bought 
some things at Mr. Mitchell's store to-day and Mr. Moses 
Olds gave me a cake of maple sugar. It was good. 



1855 

Sunday, January. — Mr. Daggett's text this morning was, 
"Behold I stand at the door and knock." They sang, "Be 
hold a stranger at the door." It was very solemn indeed. In 
the evening the text was, "And the door was shut." That 
was even more solemn than the one in the morning. I think 
they will do a great deal of good. 

January 29 — Sunday. — Mr. Daggett preached this morn- 
ing from the text, Deut. viii, 2: "And thou shalt remember 
all the way which the Lord thy God led thee." It is 10 
years to-day since Mr. Daggett came to our church, and he 
told how many deaths there had been, and how many bap- 
tisms, and how many members had been added to the church. 

30 



It was a very interesting sermon, and everybody hoped Mr. 
Daggett vs^ould stay here 1 years more, or 20, or 30, or 
always. He is the only minister that I ever had, and I don't 
ever want any other. We never could have anyone with 
such a voice as Mr. Daggett's, or such beautiful eyes. Then 




Rev. Dr. Daggett 

he has such good sermons, and always selects the hymns we 
like best, and reads them in such a way. This morning they 
sang: "Thus far the Lord has led me on, thus far his power 
prolongs my days. " After he has been away on a vacation 
he always has for the first hymn, and we always turn to it 
before he gives it out: 

"Upward I lift mine eyes. 
From God is all my aid; 
The God that built the skies. 
And earth and nature made. 

"God is the tower 
To which I fly; 
His grace is nigh 
In every hour." 

He always prays for the oil of joy for mourning and the 
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. 

April. — Grandmother received a letter from Connecticut 
to-day telling of the death of her only sister. She was knit- 
ting before she got it and she laid it down a few moments 

31 



and looked quite sad and said, "So sister Anna is dead" — 
then after a little she went on with her work. Anna watched 
her and by and by, when we were alone, she said, "Caroline, 
some day when you are about ninety you may be eating an 
apple, or reading, or doing something, and you will get a 
letter telling of my decease and after you have read it you 
will lay it down and go on with your work and say, "So 
sister Anna is dead." I told her that I knew if I lived to be 
a hundred, and should hear that she was dead, I should cry 
my eyes out, if I had any. 

September 1 . — There was a stranger preached for Dr. 
Daggett this morning and his text was, "Man looketh upon 
the outward appearance but the Lord looketh on the heart. 
When we got home, Anna said, the minister looked as 
though he had been sick from birth and his forehead stretched 
from his nose to the back of his neck, he was so bald. Grand- 
mother told her she ought to have been more interested in his 
words than in his looks, and that she must have very good 
eyes if she could see all that from our pew, which is the 
furthest from the pulpit of any in church, except Mr. Gib- 
son's, which is just the same. Anna said she couldn't help 
seeing it, unless she shut her eyes, and then everyone would 
think she had gone to sleep. We can see the Academy boys 
from our pew, too. 

Mr. Lathrop, of the seminary, is superintendent of the 
Sunday School now and he had a present to-day from Miss 
Betsey Chapin, and several visitors came in to see it present- 
ed: Dr. Daggett, Mr. and Mrs. Alex. Howell, Mr. Tous- 
ley, Mr. Stowe, Mr. and Mrs. Gideon Granger and several 
others. The present was a certificate of life membership to 
something; I did not hear what. It was just a large piece of 
parchment, but they said it cost $25. Miss Lizzie Bull is 
my Sunday School teacher now. She asked us last Sunday 
to look up a place in the Bible where the trees held a con- 
sultation together, to see which one should reign over them. 
I did not remember any such thing, but I looked it up in 
the concordance and found it in Judges ix: 8. I found the 
meaning of it in Scott's commentary and wrote it down and 
she v/as very much pleased, and told us next Sunday to find 
out all about Absalom. 

32 



September 2. — I received a letter from my brother John 
m New Orleans, and his ambrotype. He has grown amaz- 
ingly. He also sent me a N. O. paper and it gave an ac- 
count of the public exercises in the school, and said John 
spoke a piece called "The Baron's Last Banquet," and had 
great applause and it said he was "a chip off the old block." 
He is a very nice boy, I know that. James is sixteen years 
old now and is in Princeton college. He is studying Ger- 
man and says he thinks he will go to Germany some day 
and finish his education, but I guess in that respect he will be 
very much disappointed. Germany is a great ways off and 




"James and John" 

none of our relations that I ever heard of have ever been 
there and it is not at all likely that any of them ever will. 
Grandfather says, though, it is better to aim too high than 
not high enough. James is a great boy to study. They had 
their pictures taken together once and John was holding some 
flowers and James a book and I guess he has held onto it 
ever since. 

33 



Anna fell down and sprained her ankle to-day at the 
Seminary, and had to be carried into Mrs. Richards' library. 
She was sliding down the bannisters with little Annie Rich- 
ards. I wonder what she will do next. She has good luck 
in the gymnasium and can beat Emma Wheeler and Jennie 
Ruckle swinging on the pole and climbing the rope ladder, 
although they and Sarah Antes are about as spry as squirrels 
and they are all good at ten pins. Susie Daggett and Lu- 
cilla Field have gone to Farmington, Conn., to school. 

December 20. — Susan B. Anthony is in town and spoke 
in Bemis Hall this afternoon. She made a special request 
that all the Seminary girls should come to hear her, as well 
as all the women and girls in town. She had a large audi- 
ence and she talked very plainly about our rights and how we 
ought to stand up for them, and said the world would never 
go right until the women had just as much right to vote and 
rule as the men. She asked us all to come up and sign our 
names who would promise to do all in our power to bring 
about that glad day when equal rights should be the law of 
the land. A whole lot of us went up and signed the paper. 
When I told grandmother about it, she said she guessed 
Susan B. Anthony had forgotten that St. Paul said the 
women should keep silence. I told her, no, she didn't for 
she spoke particularly about St. Paul and said if he had 
lived in these times, instead of 1 800 years ago, he would 
have been as anxious to have the women at the head of the 
government as she was. I could not make grandmother agree 
with her at all and she said we might better all of us stayed 
at home. We went to prayer meeting this evening and a 
woman got up and talked. Her name was Mrs. Sands. 
We hurried home and told grandmother and she said she 
probably meant all right and she hoped we did not laugh. 

1856 

January 23. — It is one year ago to-day that Johnnie Lyon 
died. Georgie Wilkinson cried awfully in school, because 
she said she was engaged to him. This is the third morning 
that I have come down stairs at exactly 20 minutes to 7. 
I went to school all day. Mary Paul and Fannie Palmer 
read "The Snow Bird" to-day. There was some funny 

34 



things in it. One was: "Why is a lady's hair like the latest 
news? Because in the morning we always find it in the 
papers. " Another was: "One rod makes an acher, as the 
boy said when the schoolmaster flogged him." 

This is Allie Field's birthday. He got a pair of slippers 
from Mary with the soles all on ; a pair of mittens from Miss 
Eliza Chapin, and Miss Rebecca Gorham is going to give 
him a pair of stockings when she gets them done. 

February 6.- — We were awakened very early this morning 
by the cry of fire and the ringing of bells and could see the 
sky red with flames and knew it was the stores and we 
thought they were all burning up. Pretty soon we heard 
our big brass door knocker being pounded fast and grand- 
father said, "Who's there?' "Melville Arnold for the 
bank keys," we heard. Grandfather handed them out and 
dressed as fast as he could and went down, while Anna and 
I just lay there and watched the flames and shook. He was 
gone two or three hours and when he came back he said 
that Mr. Palmer's hat store, Mr. Underbill's book store, Mr. 
Shafer's tailor shop, Mrs. Smith's millinery, Pratt & Smith's 
drug store, Mr. Mitchell's dry goods store, two printing 
offices and a saloon were burned. It was a very handsome 
block. The bank escaped fire, but the wall of the next 
building fell on it and crushed it. After school to-night 
grandmother let us go down and see how the fire looked. 
It looked very sad, indeed. Judge Taylor offered grand- 
father one of the wings of his house for the bank for the 
present but he has secured a place in Mr. Buhre's store in 
the Franklin block. 

Thursday, February 7. — Dr. and Aunt Mary Carr and 
Uncle Field and Aunt Ann were over at our house to dinner 
to-day and we had a fine fish dinner, not one of Gabriel's 
(the man who blows such a blast through the street, they 
call him Gabriel), but one that Mr. Francis Granger sent to 
us. It was elegant. Such a large one it covered a big plat- 
ter. This evening Gen Granger came in and brought a gen- 
tleman with him whose name was Mr. Skinner. They asked 
grandfather, as one of the trustees of the church, if he had 
any objection to a deaf and dumb exhibition there to-morrow 
night. He had no objection, so they will have it and we 
will go. 

35 



Friday. — We went and liked it very much. The man 
with them could talk and he mterpreted it. There were two 
deaf and dumb women and three children. They performed 
very prettily, but the smartest boy did the most. He acted 
out David killing Goliah and the story of the boy stealing 
apples and how the old man tried to get him down by 
throwing grass at him, but finding that would not do, he 
threw stones which brought the boy down pretty quick 
Then he acted a boy going fishing and a man being shaved 
in a barber shop and several other things. I laughed out 
loud in school to-day and made some pictures on my slate 
and showed them to Clara Willson and made her laugh, and 
then we both had to stay after school. Anna was at Aunt 
Ann's to supper to-night to meet a little girl named Helen 
Bristol, of Rochester. Ritie Tyler was there, too, and they 
had a lovely time. 

February 8. — I have not written in my journal for several 
days, because I never hke to write things down if they don't 
go right. Anna and I were invited to go on a sleighride, 
Tuesday night, and grandfather said he did not want us to 
go. We asked him if we could spend the evening with 
Frankie Richardson and he said yes, so we went down there 
and when the load stopped for her, we went too, but we did 
not enjoy ourselves at all and did not join in the singing. I 
had no idea that sleighndes could make anyone feel so bad. 
It was not very cold, but I just shivered all the time. When 
the 9 o'clock bell rang, we were up by the "Northern Re- 
treat," and I was so glad when we got near home, so we 
could get out. Grandfather and grandmother asked us if 
we had a nice time, but we got to bed as quick as we could. 
The next day, grandfather went into Mr. Richardson's store 
and told him he was glad he did not let Frankie go on the 
sleighride, and Mr. Richardson said he did let her go and 
we went, too. We knew how it was, when we got home 
from school, because they acted so sober, and, after a while, 
grandmother talked with us about it. We told her we were 
sorry and we did not have a bit good time and would never 
do it again. When she prayed with us the next morning, as 
she always does before we go to school, she said, "Prepare 
us. Lord, for what thou art preparing for us, " and it seemed 

36 




as though she was discouraged, but she said she forgave us. 
I know one thing, we will never run away to any more sleigh- 
rides. 

February 20.— Mr. Worden, Mr. 
Henry Chesebro's father, was buried to- 
day, and Aunt Ann let Allie stay with 
us while she went to the funeral. I am 
going to Fannie Gaylord's party to-morrow 
night. 

February 2 1 . — We had a very nice 
time at Fannie Gaylord's party and a 
splendid supper. Lucilla Field laughed ' ' 

herself almost to pieces when she found "^""kie Richardson" 
on going home that she had worn her leggins all the evening. 
We had a pleasant walk home but did not stay till it was 
out. Some one asked me if I danced every set and I told 
them no, I set every dance. I told grandmother and she was 
very much pleased. Some one told us that grandfather and 
grandmother first met at a ball in the early settlement of Can- 
andaigua. I asked her if it was so and she said she never 
had danced since she became a professing Christian and that 
was more than fifty years ago. 

Grandfather heard to-day of the death of his sister, Lydia, 
who was Mrs. Lyman Beecher. She was Rev. Dr. Lyman 
Beecher's third wife. Grandmother says that they visited 
her once and she was quite nervous thinking about having 
such a great man as Dr. Lyman Beecher for her guest, as he 
was considered one of the greatest men of his day, but she 
said she soon got over this feeling, for he was so genial and 
pleasant and she noticed particularly how he ran up and 
down stairs like a boy. I think that is very apt to be the way 
for "men are only boys grown tall." 

There was a Know Nothing convention in town to-day. 
They don't want anyone but Americans to hold office, but I 
guess they will find that foreigners will get in. Our hired 
man is an Irishman and I think he would just as soon be 
"Prisidint" as not. 



37 



February 22. — This is such a beautiful day, the girls 
wanted a holiday, but Mr. Richards would not grant it. 
We told him it was Washington's birthday and we felt very 
patriotic, but he was inexorable. We had a musical review 
and literary exercises instead in the afternoon and I put on 
my blue merino dress and my other shoes. Anna dressed 
up too and I curled her hair. The Primary scholars sit up- 
stairs this term and do not have to pay any more. Anna 
and Emma Wheeler like it very much, but they do not sit to- 
gether. We are seated alphabetically, and I sit with Mary 
Reznor and Anna with Mittie Smith. They thought she 
would behave better, I suppose, if they put her with one of 
the older girls, but I do not know as it will have the "desired 
effect," as grandmother says. Miss Mary Howell and Miss 
Carrie Hart and Miss Lizzie and Miss Mollie Bull were 
visitors this afternoon. Gertrude Monier played and sang. 
Abbie Clark spoke "King Henry of Navarre" and I spoke 
"Bingen on the Rhine." Mrs. Anderson is the singing 
teacher. Marion Maddox and Pussie Harris and Mary Dan- 
iels played on the piano. Mr. Hardick is the teacher, and 
he played, too. You would think he was trying to pound 
the piano all to pieces, but he is a good player. We have 
two papers kept up at school. The Snow Bird and The 
Waif — one for the younger and the other for the older girls. 
Miss Jones, the composition teacher, corrects them both. 
Kate Buell, Anna Maria Chapin read the Waif to-day and 
Gusta Buell and I read the Snow Bird. She has beautiful 
curls and has two nice brothers, also, Albert and Arthur, 
and the girls all like them. They have not lived in town very 
long. 

February 25. — I guess I won't fill up my journal any 
more by saying I arose this morning at the usual time, for I 
don't think it is a matter of life or death whether I get up 
at the usual time or a few minutes later and when I am older 
and read over the account of the manner in which I occupied 
my time in my younger days I don't think it will add par- 
ticularly to the interest, to know whether I used to get up 
at 7 or at a quarter before. I think Miss Sprague, our school 
room teacher, would have been glad if none of us had got 
up at all this morning for we acted so in school. She does 
not want any noise during the three minute recess, but there 

38 



has been a good deal all day. In singing class they disturbed 
Mr. Kimball by blowing through combs. We took off 
our round combs and put paper over them and then blew 
— Mary Wheeler and Lottie Lapham and Anna sat near- 
est me and we all tried to do it, but Lottie was the only 
one who could make it go. He thought we all did, 
so he made us come up and sit by him. I did not 
want to, a bit. He told Miss Sprague of us and she told 
the whole school if there was as much noise another day she 
would keep every one of us an hour after half-past four. As 
soon as she said this they all began to groan. She said "Si- 
lence." I only made the least speck of a noise that no one 
heard. 

February 26. — To-night after singing class, Mr. Rich- 
ards asked all who blew through combs to rise. I did not, 
because I could not make it go, but when he said all who 
groaned could rise, I did, and some others, but not half who 
did it. He kept us very late and we all had to sign an apol- 
ogy to Miss Sprague. 

March 3. — Elizabeth Spencer sits with me in school now. 
She is full of fun but always manages to look very sober 
when Miss Chesebro looks up to see who is making the noise 
over our way. I never seem to have that knack. Anna had 
to stay after school last night and she wrote in her journal 
that the reason was because "nature will out" and because 
"she whispered and didn't have her lessons, etc., etc." Mr. 
Richards has allowed us to bring our sewing to school but 
now he says we cannot any more. I am sorry for I have 
some embroidery and I could get one pantalette done in a 
week, but now it will take me longer. Grandmother has of- 
fered me one dollar if I will stitch a linen shirt bosom and 
wrist bands for grandfather and make the sleeves. I have 
commenced, but, Oh, my! it is an undertaking. I have to 
pull the threads out and then take up two threads and leave 
three. It is very particular work and Anna says the stitches 
must not be visible to the naked eye. I have to fell the 
sleeves with the tiniest seams and stroke all the gathers and 
put a stitch on each gather. Mmnie Bellows is the best one 
in school with her needle and is a dabster at patching. She 
cut a piece right out of her new calico dress and matched a 

?<9 



new piece in and none of us could tell where it was. I am 
sure it would not be safe for me to try that. Grandmother 
let me ask three of the girls to dinner Saturday, Abbie Clark, 
Mary Wheeler and Mary Field. We had a big roast tur- 
key and everything else to match. Good enough for Queen 
Victoria. That reminds me of a conundrum we had in the 
Snowbird: What does Queen Victoria take her pills in? In 
cider. (Inside her.) 

April I 2. — We went down town this morning and bought 
us some shaker bonnets to wear to school. They cost $1 
apiece and we got some green silk for capes to put on them. 
We fixed them ourselves and wore them to school and some 
of the girls liked them and some did not, but it makes no dif- 
ference to me what they like, for I shall wear mine till it is 
worn out. Grandmother says that if we try to please every- 
body we please no-body. The girls are all having mystic 
books at school now and they are very interesting to have. 
They are blank books and we ask the girls and boys to write 
in them and then they fold the page twice over and seal it 
with wafers or wax and then write on it what day it is to 
opened. Some of them say, "not to be opened for a year," 
and that is a long time to wait. If we cannot wait we can 
open them and seal them up again. I think Anna did look 
to see what Eugene Stone wrote in hers, for it does not look 
as smooth as it did at first. We have autograph albums too 
and Horace Finley gave us lots of small photographs. We 
paste them in the books and then ask the people to write 
their names. We have got Miss Upham's picture and Dr. 
and Mrs. Daggett, Gen. Granger's and Hon. Francis Gran- 
ger's and Mrs. Adele Granger Thayer and Friend Burling, 
Dr. Jewett, Dr. Cheney, Deacon Andrews and Dr. Carr, 
and Johnnie Thompson's, Mrs. Noah T. Clarke, Mr. E. M. 
Morse, Mrs. George Wilson, Theodore Barnum, Jim Paton's 
and Will Sly, Merritt Wilcox, Tom Raines, Ed Williams, 
Gus Coleman's, W. P. Fiske and lots of the girls' pictures 
besides. Eugene Stone and Tom Eddy had their ambro- 
types taken together, in a handsome case, and gave it to 
Anna. We are going to keep them always. 

April. — The Siamese twins are in town and a lot of the 
girls went to see them in Bemis hall this afternoon. It cost 
1 cents. Grandmother let us go. Their names are Eng 

41 



and Chang and they are not very handsome. They are two 
men joined together. I hope they hke each other, but I 
don't envy them, any way. If one wanted to go somewhere 
and the other one didn't I don't see how they would man- 
age it. One would have to give up, that's certam. Perhaps 
they are both Christians. 

April 30. — Rev. Henry M. Field, editor of the New 
York Evangelist, and his little French wife are here visiting. 
She is a wonderful woman. She has written a book and 
paints beautiful pictures and was teacher of art in Cooper 
Institute, New York. He is grandmother's nephew and he 
brought her a picture of himself and his five brothers, taken 
for grandmother, because she is the only aunt they have in 
the world. The rest are all dead. The men in the picture are 
Jonathan and Matthew and David Dudley and Stephen J. 
and Cyrus W. and Henry M. They are all very nice look- 
ing and grandmother thinks a great deal of the picture. 

May I 5. — Miss Anna Gaylord is one of my teachers at 
the Seminary and when I told her that I wrote a journal 
every day she wanted me to bring her my last book and let 
her read it. I did so and she said she enjoyed it very much 
and she hoped I would keep them, for they would be inter- 
esting for me to read when I am old. I think I shall do so. 
She has a very particular friend. Rev. Mr. Beaumont, who is 
one of the teachers at the Academy. I think they are going 
to be married some day. I guess I will show her this page 
of my journal, too. Grandmother let me make a pie m a 
saucer to-day and it was very good. 

May. — We were invited to Bessie Seymour's party last 
night and grandmother said we could go. The girls all told 
us at school that they were going to wear low neck and short 
sleeves. We have caps on the sleeves of our best dresses and 
we tried to get the sleeves out, so we could go bare arms, 
but we couldn't get them out. We had a very nice time, 
though, at the party. Some of the Academy boys were 
there and they asked us to dance, but of course we couldn't 
do that. We promenaded around the rooms and went out 
to supper with them. Eugene Stone and Tom Eddy asked 
to go home with us, but grandmother sent over two girls 

42 



for us, Bridget Flynn and Hannah V^hite, so they couldn't. 
We were quite disappointed, but perhaps she won't send 
for us next time. 

May.-^Grandmother is teaching me how to knit some 
mittens now, but if I ever finish them it will be through much 
tribulation, the way they have to be ravelled out and com- 
menced over again. I think I shall know how to knit when 1 
get through, if I never know now to do anything else. Per 
haps I shall know how to write, too, for I write all of grand 
mother's letters for her, because it tires her to write too much. 
I have sorted my letters to-day and tied them in packages 
and found I had between 500 and 600. I have had aboul 
two letters a week for the past five years and have kept them 
all. Father almost always tells me in his letters to read my 
Bible and say my prayers and obey grandmother and stand 
up straight and turn out my toes and brush my teeth and be 
good to my little sister. I have been practicing all these so 
long I can say, as the young man did in the Bible when Jesus 
told him what to do to be saved, "all these have I kept from 
my youth up. " But then, I lack quite a number of things 
after all. I am not always strictly obedient. For instance, I 
know grandmother never likes to have us read the secular part 
of the New York Observer on Sunday, so she puts it in the 
top drawer of the sideboard until Monday, but I couldn't 
find anything interesting to read the other Sunday, so I took 
it out and read it and put it back. The jokes and stories in 
it did not seem as amusing as usual, so I think I will not do 
it again. 

I asked grandmother to-day to write a verse for me to keep 
always and she wrote a good one: "To be happy and live 
long, the three grand essentials are: Be busy, love somebody 
and have high aims." I think, from all I have noticed about 
her, that she has had this for her motto all her life and I 
don't think Anna and I can do very much better than to try 
and follow it too. Grandfather tells us sometimes, when she 
is not in the room, that the best thing we can do is to be just 
as near like grandmother as we can possibly be. 

Saturday, May 30.^ — Louisa Field came over to dinner 
to-day and brought Allie with her. We had roast chickens 
for dinner and lots of other nice things. Grandmother taught 

43 



us how to string lilac blossoms for necklaces and also how to 
make curls of dandelion stems. She always has some things 
in the parlor cupboard which she brings out on extra occa- 
sions, so she got them out to-day. They are some Chinamen 
which Uncle Thomas brought home when he sailed around 
the world. They are wooden images standing in boxes, 
packing tea with their feet. 

Sunday, June 1 . — Rev. Dr. Shaw, of Rochester, preached 
for Dr. Daggett to-day and his text was: "Whosoever drink- 
eth of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of 
the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." He said 
by this water he meant the pleasures of this life, wealth and 
fame and honor, of which the more we have the more we 
want and are never satisfied, but if we drink of the water 
that Christ can give us, we will have happiness here and for- 
ever. It was a very good sermon and I love to hear hmi 
preach. Grandmother never likes to start for church until 
after all the Seminary girls and Academy boys have gone by, 
but this morning we got to the gate just as the boys came 
along. When grandmother saw five or six hats come off and 
knew they were bowing to us, she asked us how we got ac- 
quainted with them. We told her that almost all the girls 
knew the Academy boys and I am sure that is true. 

Tuesday, June 8. — We are cleaning house now and 
grandmother asked Anna and me to take out a few tacks in 
the dining room carpet. We did not like it so very well, but 
we liked eating dinner in the parlor, as the table had to be 
set in there. Anna told grandmother the best way to dust 
was to close the blinds, but grandmother does not seem to 
agree with her. She says that when she gets married we 
can come to visit her any time in the year, as she is never 
going to clean house. We went down street on an errand 
to-night and hurried right back, as grandmother said she 
should look at the clock and see how long we were gone. 
Emma Wheelei went with us. Anna says she and Emma 
are as "thick as hasty pudding." 

June. — Rev. Frederick Starr, of Penn Yan, had an exhi- 
bition in Bemis hall to-day of a tabernacle just like the chil- 
dren of Israel carried with them to the Promised Land. We 

44 



went to see it. He made it himself and said he took all the 
directions from the Bible and knew where to put the curtains 
and the poles and everything. It was interesting, but we 
thought it would be queer not to have any church to go to 
but one like that, that you could take down and put up and 
carry around with you wherever you went. 

Saturday night, July. — Grandfather was asking us to- 
night how many things we could remember, and I told him 
I could remember when Zachary Taylor died and our church 
was draped in black, and Mr. Daggett preached a funeral 
sermon about him, and I could remember when Daniel Web- 
ster died and there was service held in the church and his 
last words, "I still live," was put up over the pulpit. He said 
he could remember when George Washington died and when 
Benjamin Franklin died. He was seven years old then and 
he was seventeen when Washington died. Of course his 
memory goes farther back than mine, but he said I did very 
well, considering. 

July. — I have not written in my journal for several days 
because we have been out of town. Grandfather had to go 
to Victor on business and took Anna and me with him. Anna 
says she loves to ride on the cars as it is fun to watch the 
trees and fences run so. We took dinner at Dr. Ball's and 
came home on the evening train. Then Judge Ellsworth came 
over from Penn Yan to see grandfather on business and 
asked if he could take us home with him and he said yes, so 
we went and had a splendid time and stayed two days. 
Stewart was at home and took us all around driving and took 
us to the grave yard to see our mother's grave. I copied this 
verse from the grave stone: 

"Of gentle seeming was her form 

And the soft beaming of her radiant eye 

Was sunlight to the beauty of her face. 

Peace, sacred peace, was written on her brow 

And flowed in the low music of her voice 

Which came unto the list'ner like the tones of soothing Au- 
tumn winds. 

Her hands were full of consolations which she scattered free 
to all — the poor, the sick, the sorrowfull." 

45 



I think she must have been almost exactly like grand- 
mother only she was 32 and grandmother is 72. Stewart 
went to prayer meeting because it was Wednesday night 
and when he came home his mother asked him if he took 
part in the meeting. He said he did and she asked him what 
he said. He said he told the story of Ethan Allen, the in- 
fidel, who was dying, and his daughter asked him whose 
religion she should live by, his or her mother's, and he said, 
"\ our mother's, my daughter, your mother's." This pleased 
Mrs. Ellsworth very much. Stewart is a great boy and you 
never can tell whether he is in earnest or not. It was very 
warm while we were gone and when we got home Anna told 
grandmother she was going to put on her barege dress and 
take a rocking chair and a glass of ice water and a palm leaf 
fan and go down cellar and sit, but grandmother told her if 
she would just sit still and take a book and get her mind 
on something else besides the weather, she would be cool 
enough. Grandmother always looks as cool as a cucumber 
even when the thermometer is 90 in the shade. 

Sunday, August. — Rev. Anson D. Eddy preached this 
morning. His text was from the sixth chapter of John, 44th 
verse: "No man can come to me, except the Father which 
hath sent me, draw him." He is Tom Eddy's father and 
very good looking and smart, too. He used to be one of 
the ministers of our church before Mr. Daggett came. He 
wrote a book in our Sunday School library, about Old Black 
Jacob, and grandmother loves to read it. We had a nice 
dinner to-day, green peas, lemonade and gooseberry pie. We 
had cold roast lamb, too, because grandmother never has any 
meat cooked on Sunday. 

Sunday. — Mr. Noah T. Clarke is superintendent of our 
Sunday School now and this morning he asked, "What is 
prayer?" No one answered, so I stood up and gave the 
definition from the catechism. He seemed pleased and so 
was grandmother when I told her. Anna said she supposes 
she was glad that "her labor was not in vain in the Lord." 
I think she is trying to see if she can say Bible verses, like 
grown up people do. Grandfather said that I did better 
than the little boy he read about, who, when a visitor asked 
the Sunday School children "what was the ostensible object 

46 



of Sabbath School instruction," waited till the question was 
repeated three times and then stood up and said, "Yes, sir. " 
Wednesday. — We could not go to prayer meeting to- 
night because it rained, so grandmother said we could go 
into the kitchen and stand by the window and hear the 
Methodists. We could hear every word that old Father 
Thompson said and every hymn they sung, but Mr. Jervis 
used such big words we could not understand him at all. 




Gen. John A. Granger 

Sunday. — Grandmother says she loves to look at the beau- 
tiful white heads of Mr. Francis Granger and Gen. Granger, 
as they sit in their pews in church. She says that is what it 
means in the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes where it says, 
"And the almond tree shall flourish." I don't know exactly 
why it means them, but I suppose she does. We have got 
a beautiful almond tree in our front yard covered with flow- 
ers, but the blossoms are pink. Probably they had white 
ones in Jerusalem, where Solomon lived. 

47 




Mr. Francis Granger 

Monday.- — Mr. Alex Jeffrey has come from Lexington, 
Ky., and brougfit Mrs. Ross and his three daughters, Julia, 
Shaddie and Bessie Jeffrey. Mrs. Ross knows grandmother 
and came to call and brought the girls. They are very pretty 
and Gen. Granger's granddaughters. I think they are going 
to stay all summer. 

Thanksgiving Day. — We all w^ent to church and Dr. Dag- 
gett's text was: "He hath not dealt so with any nation. ' 
Aunt Glorianna and her children were here and Uncle Field 
and all their family and Dr. Carr and all his family. There 
were about I 6 of us in all and we children had a table in 
the corner all by ourselves. We had roast turkey and every- 
thing else we could think of. After dinner we went into the 
parlor and Aunt Glorianna played on the piano and sang, 
"Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, " and 
"Poor Bessie was a sailor's wife." These are grandfather's 
favorites. Dr. Carr sang, "I'm sitting on the stile, Mary, 
where we sat side by side." He is a beautiful singer. It 
seemed just like Sunday, for grandmother never likes to have 

48 



us work or play on Thanksgiving day, but we had a very 
good time, indeed, and were sorry when they all went home. 

Saturday, December 20.^ — Lillie Reeve and her brother, 
Charlie, have come from Texas to live. He goes to the 
Academy and she boards with Miss Antoinette Pierson. Miss 
Pierson invited me up to spend the afternoon and take tea 




with her and I went and had a very nice time. She told me 
about their camp life in Texas and how her mother died, 
and her little baby sister, Minnie, lives with her Grandmother 
Sheppard in Dansville. She is a very nice gid and I like 
her very much, mdeed. 



1857 

March 6 — Anna and her set will have to square accounts 
with Mr. Richards to-morrow, for nine of them ran away 
from school this afternoon, Alice Jewett, Louisa Field, Sarah 

49 



Antes, Hattie Paddock, Helen Coy, Jennie Ruckel, Frankie 
Younglove, Emma Wheeler and Anna. They went out to 
Mr. Sackett's, where they are makmg maple sugar. Mr. 
and Mrs. Sackett were at home and two Miss Sacketts and 
Darius, and they asked them in and gave them all the sugar 
they wanted, and Anna said pickles, too, and bread and but- 
ter, and the more pickles they ate the more sugar they could 
eat. I guess they will think of pickles when Mr. Richards 
asks them where they were. I think Ellie Daggett and 
Charlie Paddock went, too, and some of the Academy boys. 

March 7. — They all had to stay after school to-night for 
an hour and copy Dictionary. Anna seems reconciled, for 
she just wrote in her journal: "It was a very good plan to 
keep us, because no one ever ought to stay out of school ex- 
cept on account of sickness, and if they once get a thing fixed 
in their minds it will stay there, and when they grow up it 
will do them a great deal of good." 

Johnnie Buxton brings his lame father around in a sort of 
a rolling chair and sells molasses candy to the Sem. girls 
every Wednesday afternoon. It is the best I ever ate. 

March. — I asked Grandfather why we do not have 
gas in the house like almost every one else and he said be- 
cause it was bad for the eyes and he liked candles and sperm 
oil better. We have the funniest little sperm oil lamp with 
a shade on to read by evenings and the fire on the hearth 
gives grandfather and grandmother all the light that they 
want for she knits in her corner and we read aloud to them 
if they want us to. I think if grandfather is proud of 
anything besides being a Bostonian, it is that everything in 
the house is forty years old. The shovel and tongs and 
andirons and fender and the haircloth sofa and the haircloth 
rocking chair and the flag bottomed chairs painted dark green 
and the two old arm chairs which belong to them and no one 
else ever thinks of touching. There is a wooden partition 
between the dining room and parlor and they say it can slide 
right up out of sight on pulleys, so that it would be all one 
room. We have often said that we wished we could see it 
go up, but they say it has never been up since the day our 
mother was married and as she is dead I suppose it would 
make them feel bad, so we probably will always have it 

50 



down. There are no curtains or even shades at the win- 
dows, because grandfather says, ' light is sweet and a pleasant 
thing it is to behold the sun." The piano is in the parlor 
and it is the same one that our mother had when she was a 
little girl but we like it all the better for that. There are four 
large oil paintings on the parlor wall, DeWitt Clinton, Rev. 
Rev. Mr. Dwight, Uncle Henry Channing Beals and Aunt 
Luciila Bates, and no matter where we sit in the room they 
are watching and their eyes seem to move whenever we do. 
There is quite a handsome lamp on a mahogany center table. 




"Will Sly" 

but I never saw it lighted. We have four sperm candles 
in four silver candlesticks and when we have company we 
light them. Johnnie Thompson, son of the minister. Rev. M. 
L. R. P., has come to the academy to school and he is very 
full of fun and got acquainted with all the girls very quick. 
He told us this afternoon to have "the other candle lit" for 

51 




he was coming down to see us this evening. Will Sly heard 
him say it and he said he was coming too. His mother 
says she always knows when he has been at our house, be- 
cause she finds sperm on his clothes and has to take brown 
paper and a hot flatiron and get it out, but still I do not 
think that Mrs. Sly cares, for she is a very nice lady and she 
and I are great friends. I presume she 
would just as soon he would spend part of 
his time with us as to be with Horace 
Finley all the time. Those boys are just 
like twins. We never see one without 
being sure that the other is not far away. 

Later. — The boys came and we had a 
very pleasant evening, but when the nine 
o'clock bell rang we heard grandfather 
Horace Finley scraping up the ashes on the hearth to cover 
the fire so it would last till morning and we all understood 
the signal and they bade us goodnight. "We won't go 
home till morning" is a song that will never be sung in this 
house. 

March 29. — Our old horse is dead and we will have to 
buy another. He was very steady and faithful. One day 
grandfather left him at the front gate and he started along 
and turned the corner all right, down the Methodist lane and 
went way down to our barn doors and stood there until Mr. 
Piser came and took him into the barn. People said they set 
their clocks by him, because it was always quarter past twelve 
when he was driven down to the bank after grandfather and 
quarter of one when he came back. I don't think the clocks 
would ever be too fast, if they were set by him. We asked 
grandfather what he died of and he said he had run his race, 
but I think he meant he had walked it, for I never saw him 
go off a jog in my life. Anna used to say he was taking a 
nap when we were out driving with grandfather. I have 
written some lines in his memory and if I knew where he was 
buried, I would print it on his head board. 

Old Dobbin's dead, that good old horse. 

We ne'er shall see him more. 
He always used to lag behind 

But now he's gone before. 

52 



It is a parody on old Grimes is dead, which is in our 
reader, only that is a very long poem. I am not going to 
show mine to grandfather till he gets over feeling bad about 
the horse. 

April. — Grandfather gave us ten cents each this morning 
for learning the 46th Psalm and has promised us $ 1 each 
for reading the Bible through in a year. We were going 
to any way. Some of the girls say they should think we 
would be afraid of grandfather, he is so sober, but we are 
not the least bit. He let us count $ 1 ,000 to-night which a 
Mr. Taylor, a cattle buyer, brought to him in the evening 
after banking hours. Anybody must be very rich who has 
all that money of their own. 




Mrs. George Willson 

Sunday, April 5. — An agent for the American Board 
of Foreign Missions preached this morning in our church 
from Romans x, 15: "How shall they hear without a 
preacher and how shall they preach except they be sent. 

53 



An agent from every society presents the cause, whatever it 
is, once a year and some people think the anniversary comes 
around very often. I always think of Mrs. George Wilson's 
poem on "A apele for air, pewer air, certin proper for the 
pews, which, she sez, is scarce as piety, or bank bills when 
ajents beg for mischuns, wich sum say is purty often (taint 
nothin to me, wat I give aint nothin to nobody). " I think 
that IS about the best poem of its kind I ever read. 

Miss Lizzie Bull told us in Sunday School to-day that 
she cannot be our Sunday School teacher any more, as she 
and her sister Mary are going to join the Episcopal church. 
We hate to have her go, but what can't be cured must be 
endured. Part of our class are going into Miss Mary 
Howell's class and part into Miss Annie Pierce's. They are 
both splendid teachers and Miss Lizzie Bull is another. We 
had preaching in our church this afternoon, too. Rev. Sam- 
uel Hansom Cox, of LeRoy Female Seminary, preached. He 
IS a great man, very large, long white hair combed back. I 
think if a person once saw him they would never forget him. 
He preached about Melchisedek, who had neither "begin- 
ning of days or end of life." Some people thought that was 
like his sermon, for it was more than one hour long. Dr. 
Cox and Mrs. Taylor came to call and asked grandfather to 
let me go to LeRoy Female Seminary, but grandfather hkes 
Ontario Female Seminary better than any other in the world. 
We wanted grandmother to have her picture taken, but she 
did not feel able to go to Mr. Finley's, so he came up Tues- 
day and took it in our dining room. She had her best cap 
on and her black silk dress and sat in her high back rocking 
chair in her usual corner near the window. He brought one 
up to show us and we Hke it so much. Anna looked at it 
and kissed it and said, "Grandmother, I think you are per- 
fectly beautiful. " She smiled and very modestly put her 
handkerchief up to her face and said, "You foolish child," 
but I am sure she was pleased, for how could she help it? A 
man came up to the open window one day where she was 
sitting, with something to sell, and while she was talking to 
him he said, "You must have been handsome, lady, when 
you were young." Grandmother said it was because he 
wanted to sell his wares, but we thought he knew it was so. 
We told her she couldn't get around it that way and we 

54 



asked grandfather and he said it was true. Our Sunday 
School class went to Mr. Finley's to-day and had a group 
ambrotype taken for our teacher, Miss Annie Pierce; Susie 
Daggett, Clara Willson, Sarah Whitney, Mary Field and 
myself. Mary Wheeler ought to have been in it, too, but 
we couldn't get her to come. We had very good success. 




Miss Lizzie Bull 



May 9. — Miss Lizzie Bull came for me to go botanizing 
with her this mornmg and we were gone from 9 till 1 2, and 
went clear up to the orphan asylum. I am afraid I am not a 
born botanist, for all the time she was analyzing the flowers 
and telling me about the corona and the corrolla and the 
calyx and the stamens and petals and pistils, I was thinking 
what beautiful hands she had and how dainty they looked, 
pulling the blossoms all to pieces. I am afraid I am common- 
place, like the man we read of in English Literature, who 
said "a primrose by the river brim, a yellow primrose, was 
to him, and it was nothing more." I asked grandmother if 
Mr. Clarke could take Sunday night supper with us and she 

55 



said she was afraid he did not know the catechism. I asked 
him Friday night and he said he would learn it on Saturday 
so that he could answer every third question any way. So 
he did and got along very well. I think he deserved a 
pretty good supper. 

June 2. — Abbie Clark wrote such a nice piece in my 
album to-day, I am going to write it in my journal. Grand- 
father says he likes the sentiment as well as any in my book. 
This is it: "It has been said that the friendship of some peo- 
ple is like our shadows, keeping close by us while the sun 
shines, deserting us the moment we enter the shade, but think 
not such is the friendship of Abbie S. Clark." Abbie and 
I took supper at Miss Mary Howell's to-night to see Adele 
Ives. We had a lovely time. 

Tuesday, June. — Gen. Tom Thumb was in town to-day 
and everybody who wanted to see him could go to Bemis 
Hall. Twenty-five cents for old people, and ten cents for 
children, but we could see him for nothing when he drove 
around town. He had a little carriage and two little bits 
of ponies and a little boy with a high silk sat on, for the 
driver. He sat inside the coach, but we could see him look- 
ing out. We went to the hall in the afternoon and the man 
who brought him stood by him and looked like a giant and 
told us all about him. Then he asked Tom Thumb to make 
a speech and stood him upon the table. He told all the 
ladies he would give them a kiss if they would come up and 
buy his picture. Some of them did. 

July 4. — Barnum's circus was in town to-day and if 
grandmother had not seen the pictures on the hand bills, I 
think she would have let us go. She said it was all right to 
look at the creatures God had made, but she did not think 
He ever intended that women should go only half dressed 
and stand up and ride on horses bare back, or jump through 
hoops in the air. So we could not go. We saw the street 
parade though and heard the band play and saw the men 
and women in a chariot, all dressed so fine, and we saw a 
big elephant and a little one and a camel with an awful 
hump on his back, and we could hear the lion roar in the 
cage, as they went by. It must have been nice to see them 
close, too, and probably we will some day. 

56 



August 8. — Grandfather has given me his whole set of 
Waverly novels and his whole set of Shakespeare's plays, 
and has ordered Mr. Jahn, the cabinet maker, to make me 
a black walnut bookcase, with glass doors and three deep 
drawers underneath, with brass handles. He is so good. 
Anna says perhaps he thinks I am going to be married and 
go to housekeeping some day. Well, perhaps he does. 
Stranger things have happened. "Barkis in willin'." I 
have just read David Copperfield and was so interested I 
could not leave it alone till I finished it. 

September I . — Anna and I have been in Litchfield, 
Conn., all summer at father's summer school for boys. James 
IS one of the teachers and he came for us and we stayed two 
weeks in New York and vicinity before me came home. 
Uncle Edward took us to Christie's Minstrels and the Hippo- 
drome, so we saw all the things we missed seeing when the 
circus was here in town. Grandmother seemed surprised 
when we told her, but she didn't say much because she was 
so glad to have us at home agam. Anna said we ought to 
brmg a present to grandfather and grandmother, for she read 
one time about some children who went away and came back 
grown up and brought home "busts of the old philosophers 
for the sitting room," so as we saw some busts of George 
Washington and Benjamin Franklin in plaster of paris we 
bought them, for they look almost like marble and grand- 
father and grandmother like them. Speakmg of busts re- 
minds me of a conundrum I heard while I was gone. How 
do we know that Poe's Raven was a dissipated bird? Be- 
cause he was all night on a bust. Grandfather took us down 
to the bank to see how he had it made over while we were 
gone. We asked him why he had a bee hive hanging out 
for a sign and he said, "Bees store their honey in the summer 
for winter use and men ought to store their money against a 
rainy day." He has a swing door to the bank with "Push" 
on it. He said he saw a man studying it one day and finally 
looking up he spelled p-u-s-h, push (and pronounced it like 
mush), "What does that mean? " Grandfather showed him 
what it meant and he thought it was very convenient. He 
was about as thick headed as the man who saw some snuff- 
ers and asked what they were for and when told to snuff 
the candle with, he immediately snuffed the candle with his 



fingers and put it in the snuffers and said, "Law sakes, how 
handy!" Grandmother really laughed when she read this 
in the paper. 

September. — Mrs. Martin, of Albany, is visiting Aunt 
Ann, and she brought grandmother a fine fish that was 
caught in the Atlantic ocean. We went over and asked her 
to come to dinner to-morrow and help eat it, and she said if 
it did not rain pitchforks she would come, so I think we may 
expect her. Her granddaughter, Hattie Blanchard, has come 
here to go to the seminary and will live with Aunt Ann. 
She IS a very pretty girl. Mary Field came over this morn- 
ing and we went down street together. Grandfather went 
with us to Mr. Nat Gorham's store, as he is selling off at 
cost, and got grandmother and me each a new pair of kid 
gloves. Hers are black and mine are green. Hers cost six 
shillings and mine cost five shillings and six pence; very cheap 
for such nice ones. Grandmother let Anna have six little 
girls here to supper to-night ; Louisa Field, Hattie Paddock, 
Helen Coy, Martha Densmore, Emma Wheeler and Alice 
Jewett. We had a splendid supper and then we played 
cards. I do not mean regular cards, mercy no! Grand- 
father thinks those kind are contagious or outrageous or some- 
thing dreadful and never keeps them in the house. Grand- 
mother said they found a pack once, when the hired man's 
room was cleaned, and they went into the fire pretty quick. 
The kind we played was just "Dr. Busby," and another 
"The Old Soldier and His Dog." There are counters with 
them, and if you don't have the card called for you have to 
pay one into the pool. It is real fun. They all said they had 
a very nice time, indeed, when they bade grandmother good 
night, and said: "Mrs. Beals, you must let Carrie and Anna 
come and see us some time, " and she said she would. I 
think it is nice to have company. 

Christmas. — Grandfather and grandmother do not care 
much about making Christmas presents. They say, when 
they were young, no one observed Christmas or New Years, 
but they always kept Thanksgiving day. Our cousins, the 
Fields and Carrs, gave us several presents and Uncle Edward 
sent us a basketfull from New York by express. Aunt Ann 
gave me one of the Lucy books and a Franconia story book 

58 



and to Anna, The Child's Book on Repentance. I am 
afraid she will never read hers, but I will lend her mine. 
Miss Lucy Ellen Guernsey, of Rochester, gave me "Christ- 
mas Earnings" and wrote in it: "Carrie C. Richards with 
the love of the author." I think that is very nice. Anna 
and I were chattermg like two magpies to-day, and a man 
came in to talk to grandfather on business. He told us in 
an undertone that children should be seen and not heard. 
After he had gone I saw Anna watching him a long time 
till he was only a speck m the distance and I asked her what 
she was domg. She said she was doing it because it was a 
sign if you watched persons out of sight you would never 
see them again. She does not seem to have a very forgiving 
spirit, but you can't always tell. 

1858 

February 24. — The boarders at the seminary had some 
tableaux last evening and invited a great many from the vil- 
lage. They were splendid. Mr. Chubbuck was in nearly 
all of them. The most beautiful one was Abraham offering 
up Isaac. Mr. Chubbuck was Abraham and Sarah Ripley 
was Isaac. After the tableaux they acted a charade. The 
word was "Masterpiece." It was fine. After the audi- 
ence got half way out of the chapel, Mr. Richards an- 
nounced "The Belle of the Evening." The curtain rose and 
every one rushed back, expecting to see a young lady dressed 
in the height of fashion, when immediately the seminary bell 
rang! Mr. Blessner's scholars gave all the music and he 
stamped so, beating time, it almost drowned the music. 
Some one suggested a bread and milk poultice for his foot. 
Anna has been taking part in some private theatricals. The 
play is in contrast to "The Spirit of '76" and the idea car- 
ried out is that the men should stay at home and rock the 
cradles and the women should take the rostrum. Grand- 
mother was rather opposed to the idea, but everyone wanted 
Anna to take the part of leading lady, so she consented. She 
even helped Anna make her bloomer suit and sewed on the 
braid for trimming on the skirt herself. She did not know 
that Anna's opening sentence was, "How are you, sir? 
Cigar, please!" It was acted at Mrs. John Bates' house on 
Gibson street and was a great success, but when they de- 

59 



cided to repeat it another evening grandmother told Anna 
she must choose between going on the stage and hving with 
her grandmother, so Anna gave it up and some one else took 
her part. 

March. — There is a great deal said about spirits nowa- 
days and a lot of us girls went into one of the recitation 
rooms after school to-night and had a spiritual seance. We 
sat around Mr. Chabbuck's table and put our hands on it 
and it moved around and stood on two legs and sometimes 
on one. I thought the girls helped it but they said they 
didn't. We heard some loud raps, too, but they sounded 
very earthy to me. Eliza Burns, one of the boarders, told us 
if we would hold our breath we could pick up one of the 
girls from the floor and raise her up over our heads with one 
finger of each hand, if the girl held her breath too. We tried 
it with Anna and did it, but we had such hard work to keep 
from laughing I expected we would drop her. There is 
nothing very spintuelle about any of us. I told grandmother 
and she said we reminded her of Jemima Wilkinson, who told 
all her followers that the world was to come to an end on a 
certain day and they should all be dressed in white and get 
up on the roofs of the houses and be prepared to ascend and 
meet the Lord in the air. I asked grandmother what she 
said when nothing happened and she said she told them 
it was because they did not have faith enough. If they had, 
everything would have happened just as she said. Grand- 
mother says that one day at a time has always been enough 
for her and that to-morrow will take care of the things of 
itself. 

June. — Cyrus W. Field called at our house to-day. He 
is making a trip through the States and stopped here a few 
hours because grandmother is his aunt. He made her a 
present of a piece of the Atlantic cable about six inches long, 
which he had mounted for her. It is a very nice souvenir. 
He is a tall, fine looking man and very pleasant. 

August 1 7. — There was a celebration in town to-day be- 
cause the Queen's message was received on the Atlantic 
cable. Guns were fired and church bells rung and flags 
were waving everywhere. In the evening there was a torch- 
light procession and the town was all lighted up except Gib- 

60 



son street. Allie Antes died this morning, so the people on 
that street kept their houses as usual. Anna says that prob- 
ably Allie Antes was better prepared to die than any other 
little girl in town. Atwater hall and the academy and the 
hotel were more brilliantly illuminated than any other build- 
mgs. Grandfather saw something in a Boston paper that a 
minister said in his sermon about the Atlantic cable and he 
wants me to write it down in my journal. This is it: "The 
two hemispheres are now successfully united by means of the 
electric wire, but what is it, after all, compared with the 
instantaneous communication between the Throne of Divine 
Grace and the heart of man? Offer up your silent petition. 
It is transmitted through realms of unmeasured space more 
rapidly than the lightning's flash and the answer reaches the 
soul e're the prayer has died away on the sinner's lips. Yet 
this telegraph, performing its saving functions ever since 
Christ died for men on Calvary, fills not the world with ex- 
ultation and shouts of gladness, with illuminations and bon 
fires and the booming of cannon. The reason is, one is the 
telegraph of this world and may produce revolutions on 
earth; the other is the sweet communication between Christ 
and the christian soul and will secure a glorious immortality 
in Heaven. " Grandfather appreciates anything like that 
and I like to please him. 

There was a lecture at the seminary to-night and Rev. 
Dr. Hibbard, the Methodist minister, who lives next door 
above the Methodist church, came home with us. Grand- 
mother was very much pleased when we told her. 

Sunday. — Rev. Henry Ward Beecher is staying at Judge 
Taylor's and came with them to church to-day. Everybody 
knew that he was here and thought he would preach and the 
church was packed full. When he came in he went right to 
Judge Taylor's pew and sat with them and did not preach 
at all, but it was something to look at him. Mr. Daggett was 
away on his vacation and Rev. Mr. Jervis of the M. E. 
church preached. I heard some people say they guessed 
even Mr. Beecher heard some new words to-day, for Mr. 
Jervis is quite a hand to make them up or find very long hard 
ones in the dictionary. 



61 



August 30. — Rev. Mr. Tousley was hurt to-day by the 
falling of his barn which was being moved, and they think 
his back is broken and if he lives he can never sit up again. 
Only last Sunday he was in Sunday School and had us sing 
in memory of Allie Antes. 

A mourning class, a vacant seat, 
Tell us that one we loved to meet. 
Will join our youthful throng no more, 
'Till all these changing scenes are o'er. 

And now he will never meet with us again and the chil- 
dren will never have another minister all their own. He 
thinks he may be able to write letters to the children and per- 
haps write his own life. We all hope he may be able to sit 
up if he cannot walk. 

Some one told us that when Bob and Henry Antes were 
small boys they thought they would like to try, just for once, 
to see how it would seem to be bad, so in spite of all of Mr. 
Tousley's sermons, they went out behind the barn one day 
and in a whisper Bob said, "I swear, " and Henry said, 
"So do I. " Then they came into the house looking guilty 
and quite surprised, I suppose, that they were not struck 
dead, just as Ananias and Sapphira were for lying. 

September 9. — We gave the ambrotype to Miss Pierce 
and she liked it very much and so does her mother and Fan- 
nie. Her mother is lame and cannot go anywhere so we 
often go to see her and she is always glad to see us and so 
pleasant. 

1859 

April. — Anna wanted me to help her write a composition 
last night, and we decided to write on "Old Journals," so we 
got hers and mine both out and made selections and then 
she copied them. When we were on our way to school this 
morning we met Mr. E. M. Morse and Anna asked him if 
he did not want to read her composition that Carrie wrote 
for her. He made a very long face and pretended to be much 
shocked, but said he would like to read it, so he took it and 
also her album, which she asked him to write in. At night, 

62 



on his way home, he stopped at our door and left them both. 
When she looked in her album, she found this was what 
he had written : 

"Anna, when you have grown old and wear spectacles 
and a cap, remember the boyish young man who saw your 
fine talents in 1 859 and was certain you would add culture 
to nature and become the pride of Canandaigua. Do not 
forget also that no one deserves praise for anything done by 
others and that your progress in wisdom and goodness will 
be watched by no one more anxiously than by your true 
friend, E. M. Morse." 




"Old Friend Burling" 



I think she might as well have told Mr. Morse that the old 
journals were as much hers as mine; but I think she likes to 
make out she is not as good as she is. Sarah Foster helped 
us do our arithmetic examples to-day. She is splendid in 
mathematics. 



63 



Old Friend Buding brought grandfather a specimen of his 
handwriting to-day to keep. It is beautifully written, like 
copper plate. This is the verse he wrote and grandfather 
gave it to me to paste into my book of extracts: 

DIVINE LOVE. 

Could we with ink the ocean fill, 

Was the whole earth of parchment made. 
Was every single stick a quill. 

And every man a scribe by trade; 
To write the love of God above 

Would drain the ocean dry; 
Nor could that scroll contain the whole 

Though stretched from sky to sky. 

Transcribed by William S. Burling, Canandaigua, Christ- 
mas, 1 859, in the 83rd year of his age. 

December 8, Sunday.- — Mr. E. M. Morse is our Sunday 
School teacher now and the Sunday School room is so 
crowded that we go up into the church for our class recita- 
tion. Abbie Clark, Fannie Gaylord and myself are the 
only scholars, and he calls us the three christian graces, faith, 
hope and charity, and the greatest of these is charity. I am 
the tallest, so he says I am charity. We recite m Mr. Gib- 
son's pew, because it is farthest away and we do not disturb 
the other classes. He gave us some excellent advice to-day 
as to what was right and said if we ever had any doubts 
about anything we should never do it and should always be 
perfectly sure we are in the right before we act. He gave 
us two weeks ago a poem to learn by Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge. It is an apostrophe to God and very hard to 
learn. It is blank verse and has eighty-five lines in it. I have 
it committed at last and we are to recite it in concert. The 
last two lines are, "Tell thou the silent sky and tell the stars 
and tell yon rising sun. Earth with its thousand voices praises 
God." Mr. Morse delivered a lecture in Bemis hall last 
Thursday night. The subject was, "You and I." It was 
splendid and he lent me the manuscript afterwards to read. 
Dick Valentine lectured in the hall the other night, too. His 
subject was "Prejudice." There was some difference in 
the lectures and the lecturers. The latter was more highly 
colored ! 

64 



The older ladies of the town have formed a society for 
the relief of the poor and are going to have a course of lec- 
tures in Bemis hall under their auspices to raise funds. The 
lecturers are to be from the village and are to be: Rev. O. E. 
Daggett, subject, "Ladies and Gentlemen;" Dr. Harvey 
Jewett, "The House We Live In;" Prof. F. E. R. Chab- 
buck, "Progress;" Hon. H. W. Taylor, "The Empty 
Place;" Prof. E. G. Tyler, "Finance;" Mr. W. T. Clarke. 
"Chemistry;" E. M. Morse, "Graybeard and His Dogmas." 
The young ladies have started a society, too, and we have 
great fun and fine suppers. We met at Jennie Howell's to 
organize. We are to meet once in two weeks and are to 
present each member with an album bed quilt with all our 
names on when they are married. Susie Daggett says she 
is never going to be married, but we must make her a quilt 
just the same. Laura Chapin sang "Mary Lindsey, dear," 
and we got to laughing so that Susie Daggett and I lost our 
equilibrium entirely, but I found mine by the time I got 
home. 

December. — We have had a Christmas tree and many 
other attractions in seminary chapel. The day scholars and 
townspeople were permitted to participate and we had a 
postoffice and received letters from our friends. Anna says 
they had all the smart people for clerks in the P. O. — Mr. 
Morse, Miss Achert, Albert Granger and herself. Someone 
asked Albert Granger if his law business was good and he 
said one man thronged into his office one day. Mr. E. M. 
Morse wrote me a fictitious one, claiming to be written from 
the north pole, ten years hence. I will copy it in my journal, 
for I may lose the letter. I had some gifts on the Christ- 
mas tree and gave some. I presented my teacher, Mr. 
Chabbuck, with two large hemstitched handkerchiefs with 
his initials embroidered in a corner of each. As he is favored 
with the euphonious name of Frank Emery Robinson Chub- 
buck, it was a work of art to make his initials look beautiful. 
I inclosed a stanza in rhyme: 

Amid the changing scenes of life 

If any storm should rise. 
May you ever have a handkerchief 

To wipe your weeping eyes. 

65 



Here is Mr. Morse's letter: 

North Pole, 
Miss Carrie Richards, I January, 1 869. 

My dear young friend : 

It is very cold here and the pole is covered with ice. I 
climbed it yesterday to take an observation and arrange our 
flag, the stars and stripes, which I hoisted immediately on 
my arrival here, ten years ago. I thought I should freeze and 
the pole was so slippery that I was in great danger of coming 
down faster than was comfortable. Although this pole has 
been used for more than 6,000 years, it is still as good as new. 
The works of the Great Architect do not wear out. It is 
now ten years since I have seen you and my other two 
Christian Graces and I have no doubt of your present posi- 
tion among the most brilliant, noble and excellent women in 
all America. I always knew and recognized your great 
abilities. Nature was very generous to you all and you were 
enjoying fine advantages at the time I last knew you. I 
thought your residence with your grandparents an admirable 
school for you and you and your sister were most evidently 
the best joy of their old age. You certainly owe much to 
them. At the time that I left my three Christian Graces, Mrs. 
Grundy was sometimes malicious enough to say that they 
"svere injuring themselves by flirting. I always told the old 
lady that I had the utmost confidence in the judgment and 
discretion of my pupils and that they would be very careful 
and prudent in all their conduct. I confessed that flirting 
was wrong and very injurious to anyone 
who was guilty of it, but I was very sure 
that you were not. I could not believe 
that you would disappoint us all and be- 
come only ordinary women, but that you 
would become the most exalted characters, 
scorning all things unworthy of ladies and 
Christians and I was right and Mrs. 
Grundy was wrong. When the ice around 
Mr. E. M. Morse f^g poj^ ^haws out I shall make a flying 
visit to Canandaigua. I send you a tame polar bear for a 
playfellow. This letter will be conveyed to you by Esqui- 
maux express. jy,^^^ ^^^jy ^^^^^^ 

E. M. MORSE. 

66 




I think some one must have shown some verses that we 
girls wrote to Mrs. Grundy and made her think that our 
mmds were more upon the young men than they were upon 
our studies, but if people knew how much time we spent on 
Paley's "Evidences of Christianity" and Butler's Analogy 
and Kames' Elements of Criticism and Tyler's Ancient His- 
tory and Olmstead's Mathematical Astronomy and our 
French and Latin and arithmetic and algebra and geometry 
and trigonometry and bookkeeping, they would know we 
had very little time to think of the masculine gender. 

1860 

June. — Annie Granger asked Anna and me to come 
over to her house to see her baby. We were very eager to 
go and wanted to hold it and carry it around the room. She 
was willing but asked us if we had any pins on us anywhere. 
She said she had the nurse sew the baby's clothes on every 
morning, so that if she cried she would know whether it was 
pains or pins. We said we had no pins on us, so we stayed 
quite a while and held little Miss Hattie to our heart's con- 
tent. She is named for her aunt, Hattie Granger. Anna 
says she thinks Miss Martha Morse will give medals to her 
and Mary Daggett for being the most meddlesome girls in 
school, judging from the number of times she has spoken to 
them to-day. Anna is getting to be a regular punster, al- 
though I told her that Blair's Rhetoric says that punning is 
not the highest kind of wit. Mr. Morse met us coming from 
school in the rain and said it would not hurt us as we were 
neither sugar nor salt. Anna said, "No, but we are 'lasses.' 
Grandmother has been giving us sulphur and molasses for 
the purification of the blood and we have to take it three 
mornings and then skip three mornings. This morning Anna 
commenced going through some sort of gymnastics and 
grandmother asked her what she was doing, and she said it 
was her first morning to skip. 

Friday, July. — I have not kept a journal for two weeks 
because we have been away visiting. Anna and I had an 
invitation to go to Utica to visit Rev. and Mrs. Brandigee. 
He is rector of Grace Episcopal church there and his wife 
used to belong to father's church in Morristown, N. J. Her 

67 



name was Miss Condict. Rev. Mr. Stowe was going to 
Hamilton college at Clinton, so he said he would take us 
to Utica. We had a lovely time. The corner stone of the 
church was laid while we were there and Bishop DeLancey 
came and stayed with us at Mr. Brandigee's. He is a very 
nice man and likes children. One morning they had muffins 
for breakfast and Anna asked if they were ragamuffins. Mr. 
Brandigee said, "Yes, they are made of rags and brown 
paper," but we knew he was just joking. When we came 
away Mrs. Brandigee gave me a prayer book and Anna a 
vase, but she didn't like it and said she should tell Mrs. 
Brandigee she wanted a prayer book too, so I had to change 
with her. When we came home Mr. Brandigee put us in 







Dr. Jewett 

care of the conductor. There was a fine soldier looking man 
m the car with us and we thought it was his wife with him. 
He wore blue coat and brass buttons, and some one said his 
name was Custer and that he was a West Point cadet and 
belonged to the regular army. I told Anna she had better 
behave or he would see her, but she would go out and stand 

68 



on the platform until the conductor told her not to. I pulled 
her dress and looked very stern at her and motioned toward 
Mr. Custer, but it did not seem to have any impression on 
her. I saw Mr. Custer smile once because my words had no 
effect. I was glad when we got to Canandaigua. I heard 
someone say that Dr. Jewett was at the depot to take Mr. 
Custer and his wife to his house, but I only saw grandfather 
coming after us. He said, "Well, girls, you have been and 
you have got back," but I could see that he was glad to 
have us at home again, even if we are "troublesome com- 
forts," as he sometimes says. 

1861 

We seem to have come to a sad, sad time. The Bible 
says, "A man's worst foes are those of his own household." 
The whole United States has been like one great household 
for many years. "United we stand, divided we fall!" has 
been our watchword, but some who should have been its 
best friends have proven false and broken the bond. Men 
are taking sides, some for the North, some for the South. 
Hot words and fierce looks have followed and there has been 
a storm in the air for a long time. 

April 15. — The storm has broken upon us. The Con- 
federates fired on Fort Sumter, just off the coast of South 
Carolina, and forced her on April 1 4 to haul down the flag 
and surrender. President Lincoln has issued a call for 75,- 
000 men and many are volunteering to go all around us. 
How strange and awful it seems. 

I recited "Scot and the Veteran" to-day at school and 
Mary Field recited "To Drum Beat and Heart Beat a Sol- 
dier Marches By;" Anna recited "The Virginia Mother." 
Everyone learns war poems now-a-days. There was a patri- 
otic rally in Bemis hall last night and a quartette sang, "The 
Sword of Bunker Hill" and "Dixie" and "John Brown's 
Body Lies a Mouldering in the Grave," and "Marching 
Through Georgia" and many other patriotic songs. 

May. — Many of the young men are going from Canan- 
daigua and all the neighboring towns. It seems very patriotic 
and grand when they are singing "It is sweet. Oh, 'tis sweet, 
for one's country to die," and we hear the martial music and 

69 



see the flags flying and see the recruiting tents on the square 
and meet men in uniform at every turn and see tram loads of 
the boys in blue gomg to the front, but it will not seem so 
grand if we hear they are dead on the battlefield, far from 
home. A lot of us girls went down to the train and took 
flowers to the soldiers as they were passing through and they 
cut buttons from their coats and gave to us as souvenirs. We 
have flags on our paper and envelopes and have all our sta- 
tionery bordered with red, white and blue. We wear littb 
flag pins for badges and tie our hair with red white and blue 
ribbon and have pirs and ear rings made of the buttons the 
soldiers gave us. We are going to sew for them in our 
society and get the garments all cut from the older ladies 
society. They work every day in one of the rooms of the 
court house and cut out garments and make them and scrape 
them and roll up bandages. They say they will provide 
us with all the garments we will make. We are going to 
write notes and enclose them in the garments to cheer up the 
soldier boys. It does not seem now as though I could give 
up anyone who belonged to me. The girls in our society 
say that if any of the members do send a soldier to the war 
they shall have a flag bed quilt, made by the society, and 
have the girls' names on the stars. 

June. — I have graduated from Ontario Female Seminary 
after a five years' course and had the honor of receiving a 
diploma from the courtly hands of Gen. John A. Granger. 
I am going to have it framed and handed down to my 
grandchildren as a memento, not exactly of sleepless nights 
and midnight vigils, but of rising betimes, at what Anna calls 
the crack of dawn. She likes that expression better than 
daybreak. I heard her reciting in the back chamber one 
morning about 4 o'clock and listened at the door. She was 
saying in the most nonchalant manner: "Science and literature 
in England were fast losing all traces of originality, invention 
was discouraged, research unvalued and the examination of 
nature prescribed. It seemed to be generally supposed that 
the treasure accumulated in the preceding ages was quite 
sufficient for all national purposes and that the only duty 
which authors had to perform was to reproduce what had 
thus been accumulated, adorned with all the graces of pol- 
ished style. Tameness and monotony naturally result from 

7(1 



a slavish adherence to all arbitrary rules and every branch 
of literature felt this blighting influence. History, perhaps, 
was in some degree an exception, for Hume, Robertson, and 
more especially Gibbon, exhibited a spirit of original investi- 
gation which found no parallel among their contemporaries." 
I looked in and asked her where her book was and she said 
she left it down stairs. She has "got it" all right, I am sure. 
We helped decorate the seminary chapel for two days. Our 
motto was, "Still achieving, still pursuing." Miss Guernsey 
made most of the letters and Mr. Chubbuck put them up and 
he hung all the paintings. It was a very warm week. Gen. 
Granger had to use his palm leaf fan all the time, as well as 
the rest of us. There were six in our clcw-s, Mary Field, 
Lucia Petherick, Kate Lilly, Sarah Clay, Abby Scott and 
myself. Abbie Clark would have been in the class, but she 
went to Pittsfield, Mass., instead. Gen. Granger said to each 
one of us, "It gives me great pleasure to present you with 
this diploma," and when he gave Miss Scott hers, as she is 
from Alabama, he said he wished it might be as a flag of 
truce between the North and the South, and this sentiment 
was loudly cheered. Gen. Granger looked so handsome 
with his black dress suit and ruffled shirt front and all the 
natural grace which belongs to him. The sheepskin has a 
picture of the seminary on it and this inscription: "The 
Trustees and Faculty of the Ontario Female Seminary here- 
by certify that has completed the course of study 

prescribed in this Institution, maintained the requisite scholar- 
ship and commendable deportment and is therefore admitted 
to the graduating honors of this Institution. President Board, 
John A. Granger; Benjamin F. Richards, Edward G. Tyler, 
Principals." 

December 1 . — Dr. Carr is dead. He had a stroke of 
paralysis two weeks ago and for several days he has been 
unconscious. The choir of our church, of which he was 
leader for so long, and some of the young people came and 
stood around his bed and sang, "Jesus, Lover of My Soul." 
They did not know whether he was conscious or not, but 
they thought so because the tears ran down his cheeks from 
his closed eyelids, though he could not speak or move. The 
funeral was from the church and Dr. Daggett's text was, 
"The beloved physician." 



A young man asked Anna to take a drive to-day, but 
grandmother was not willing at first to let her go. She 
finally gave her consent, after Anna's plea that he was so 
young and his horse was so gentle. Just as they were ready 
to start, I heard Anna run upstairs and I heard him say, 
"What an Anna!" I asked her afterwards what she went 
for and she said she remembered that she had left the soap 
in the water. 

1862 

February. — John B. Gough lectured in Bemis hall last 
night and was entertained by Governor Clark. I told 
grandfather that I had an invitation to the lecture and he 
asked me who from. I told him from Mr. Noah T. Clarke's 
brother. He did not make the least objection and I was 
awfully glad, because he has asked me to the whole course. 
Wendell Phillips and Horace Greeley, E. H. Chapin and 
John G. Saxe and Bayard Taylor are expected. John B. 
Gough's lecture was fine. He can make an audience laugh 
a§ much by wagging his coattails as some men can by talking 
an hour. 

March 26. — I have been up at Laura Chapin's from ten 
o'clock in the morning until ten at night, finishing Jennie 
Howell's bed quilt, as she is to be married very soon. Al- 
most all of the girls were there. We finished it at 8 p. m. 
and when we took it off the frames we gave three cheers. 
Some of the youth of the village came up to inspect our 
handiwork and see us home. Before we went Julia Phelps 
sang and played on the guitar and Captain Barry also sang 
and we all sang together, "O! Columbia, the gem of the 
ocean, three cheers for the red, white and blue." 

Mr. Dillaway is at Mr. Gibson's as tutor for one of the 
Sherman boys. They walk up and down Main street every 
day, taking their constitutional, and people say, there goes 
"the tutor " and "the tooted." 

June. — There was great excitement in prayer meeting 
last night, it seemed to Abbie Clark, Mary Field and me 
on the back seat where we always sit. Several people have 
asked us why we sit away back there by old Mrs. Kinney, 



but we tell them that she sits on the other side of the stove 
from us and we like the seat, because we have occupied it so 
long. I presume we would see less and hear more if we sat 
in front. To-night just after Mr. Walter Hubbell had made 
one of his most beautiful prayers and Mr. Cyrus Dixon was 
praying, a big June bug came zipping into the room and 
snapped against the wall and the lights and barely escaped 
several bald heads. Anna kept dodging around in a most 
startling manner and I expected every moment to see her 
walk out and take Emma Wheeler with her, for if she is 
afraid of anything more than dogs, it is June bugs. At this 
crisis the bug flew out and a cat stealthily walked in. We 
knew that dear Mrs. Taylor was always unpleasantly affected 
by the sight of cats and we didn't know what would hap- 
pen if the cat should go near her. The cat very innocently 
ascended the steps to the desk and as Judge and Mrs. Taylor 
always sit on the front seat, she couldn't help observing the 
ambitious animal, as it started to assist Dr. Daggett in con- 
ducting the meeting. The result was that Mrs. Taylor just 
managed to reach the outside door before fainting away. 
We were glad when the benediction was pronounced. 

June. — Anna and I had a serenade last night from the 
Academy Glee Club, I think, as their voices sounded familiar. 
We were awakened by the music, about 11 p. m., quite 
suddenly and I thought I would step across the hall to the 
front chamber for a match to light the candle. I was only 
half awake, however, and lost my bearings and stepped off 
the stairs and rolled or slid to the bottom. The stairs are 
winding, so I must have performed two or three revolutions 
before I reached my destination. I jumped up and ran back 
and found Anna sitting up in bed, laughing. She asked me 
where I had been and said, if I had only told her where I 
was going, she would have gone for me. We decided not 
to strike a light, but just listen to the singing. Anna said 
she was glad that the leading tenor did not know how quickly 
I "tumbled" to the words of his song "O come my love and 
be my own, nor longer let me dwell alone," for she thought 
he would be too much flattered. Grandfather came into the 
hall and asked if any bones were broken and if he should 
send for a doctor. We told him we guessed not, we thought 
we would be all right in the morning. He thought it was 

7?< 



Anna who fell down stairs, as he is never looking for such 
exploits m me. We girls received some verses from the 
Academy boys, written by Greig Mulligan, under the as- 
sumed name of Simon Snooks. The subject was the poor 
unfortunate Academy boys. We have answered them and 
now I fear Mrs. Grundy will see them and imagine some- 
thing serious is going on. But she is mistaken and will find, 
at the end of the session, our hearts are still in our own pos- 
session. 

1863 



March. — Our society met at Fannie Pierce's this after- 
noon. Her mother is an invalid and never gets out at all, 
but she is very much interested in 
the soldiers and in all young peo- 
ple, and loves to have us come in 
and see her and we love to go. 
She enters into the plans of all of 
us young girls and has a personal 
interest in us. We had a very 
good time to-night and Laura 
Chapin was more full of fun than 
usual. Once there was silence 
for a minute or two and some one 
said "awful pause. " Laura said, 
"I guess you would have awful 
paws if you worked as hard as I 
do. ' We were talking about 
Abbie Clark }^ow many of us girls would be 

entitled to flag bed quilts, and according to the rules, they 
said that, up to date, Abbie Clark and I were the only ones. 
The explanation is, that Capt. George N. Williams and 
Lieut. E. C. Clark are enlisted in their country's service. 
Abbie Clarke and I had our ambrotypes taken for two young 
braves who are going to the war. 




74 




July 26. — Charlie Wheeler was buried with military 
honors from the Congregational church to-day. Two com- 
panies of the 54th New York State National Guard at- 
tended the funeral, and the church was 
packed, galleries and all. It was the 
saddest funeral and the only one of a 
soldier that I ever attended. I hope it 
will be the last. He was killed at Get- 
tysburg, July 3, by a sharpshooter's 
bullet. He was a very bright young 
man, graduate of Yale college and was 
practicing law. He was captain of 
Company K, 1 26th N. Y. volunteers. 
I have copied an extract from Mr. 
Morse's lecture, "You and I : " "And 
who has forgotten that gifted youth, "And i" 

who fell on the memorable field of Gettysburg? To win 
a noble name, to save a beloved country, he took his 
place beneath the dear old flag, and while cannon thundered 
and sabers clashed and the stars of the old Union shone 
above his head he went down in the shock of battle and left 
us desolate, a name to love and a glory to endure. And as 
we solemnly know, as by the old charter of liberty we most 
sacredly swear, he was truly and faithfully and religiously 

Of all our friends the noblest. 
The choicest and the purest. 
The nearest and the dearest. 
In the field at Gettysburg. 
Of all the heroes bravest. 
Of soul the brightest, whitest. 
Of all the warriors greatest. 
Shot dead at Gettysburg. 

And where the fight was thickest 
And where the smoke was blackest. 
And where the fire was hottest. 
On the fields of Gettysburg, 
There flashed his steel the brightest. 
There blazed his eye the fiercest. 
There flowed his blood the reddest 
On the field of Gettysburg. 



O wailing winds of heaven! 
O weeping dew of evening! 
O music of the waters 
That flow at Gettysburg, 
Mourn tenderly the hero, 
The rare and glorious hero, 
The loved and peerless hero. 
Who died at Gettysburg. 

His turf shall be the greenest. 
His roses bloom the sweetest. 
His willow droop the saddest 
Of all at Gettysburg. 
His memory live the freshest. 
His fame be cherished longest. 
Of all the holy warriors. 
Who fell at Gettysburg. 

These were patriots, these were our jewels. When shall 
we see their like again? And of every soldier who has 
fallen in this war his friends may write just as lovingly as 
you and I may do of those to whom I pay my feeble tribute." 

August I 2. — Lucilla Field was married in our church to 
Rev. S. W. Pratt to-day. I always thought she was cut 
out for a minister's wife. Jennie Draper cried herself sick 
because Lucilla, her Sunday School teacher, is going away. 

1864 

April 1 . — Grandfather has decided to go to New York 
to attend the fair given by the Sanitary Commission, and he 
is taking two immense books, which are more than one hun- 
dred years old, to present to the Commission, for the benefit 
of the war fund. 

April 1 8. — Grandfather returned home to-day, unex- 
pectedly to us. I knew he was sick when I met him at the 
door. He had traveled all night alone from New York, 
although he said that a stranger, a fellow passenger, from 
Ann Arbor, Mich., on the train noticed that he was suffering 
and was very kind to him. He said he fell in his room at 
Gramercy Park hotel, in the night, and his knee was very 
painful. We sent for old Dr. Cheney and he said the hurt 

76 



was a serious one and needed most careful attention. I was 
invited to a spelling school at Abbie Clark's in the evening 
and grandmother said that she and Anna would take care 
of grandfather till I got back, and then I could sit up by 
him the rest of the night. We spelled down and had quite 
a merry time. Major C. S. Aldrich had escaped from prison 
and was there. He came home with me, as my soldier is 
down in Virginia. 

April 19. — Grandfather is much worse. He was de- 
lirious all night. We have sent for Dr. Rosewarne in coun- 
sel and Mrs. Lightfoote has come to stay with us all the time 
and we have sent for Aunt Glorianna. 

May 1 6. — I have not written in my diary for a month 
and it has been the saddest month of my life. Dear, dear 
grandfather is dead. He was buried May 2, just two weeks 
from the day that he returned from New York. We did 
everything for him that could be done, but at the end of the 
first week the doctors saw that he was beyond all human aid. 
Uncle Thomas told the doctors that they must tell him. He 
was much surprised, but received the verdict calmly. He 
said "he had no notes out and perhaps it was the best 
time to go." He had taught us how to live and he seemed 
determined to show us how a Christian should die. He said 
he wanted "grandmother and the children to come to him 
and have all the rest remain outside." When we came into 
the room he said to grandmother "do you know what the 
doctors say?" She bowed her head, and then he motioned 
for her to come on one side and Anna and me on the other 
and kneel by his bedside. He placed a hand upon us and 
upon her and said to her, "All the rest seem very much ex- 
cited, but no matter what happens you and I must be com- 
posed." Then he asked us to say the 23d Psalm, "The 
Lord is my Shepherd," and then all of us said the Lord's 
Prayer together, after grandmother had offered a little 
prayer, for grace and strength in this trying hour. Then he 
said, "grandmother, you must take care of the girls, and 
girls, you must take care of grandmother." We felt as 
though our hearts would break and were sure we never could 
be happy again. During the next few days he often spoke 
of dying and of what we must do when he was gone. Once 
when I was sitting by him he looked up and smiled and said : 

77 



"You will lose all your roses watching over me." A good 
many business men came in to see him to receive his parting 
blessing. The two McKechnie brothers, Alexander and 
James, came in together on their way home from church the 
Sunday before he died. Dr. Daggett came very often. He 
lived until Saturday, the 30th, and in the morning he said, 
"Open the door wide." We did so and he said, "Let the 
King of Glory enter in." Very soon after he said, "I am 
going home to Paradise," and then sank into that sleep which 
on this earth knows no waking. I sat by the window near 
his bed and watched the rain beat into the grass and saw 
the peonies and crocuses and daffodils beginning to come up 
out of the ground and I thought to myself, I shall never see 
the flowers come up again without thinking of these sad, sad 
days. He was buried Monday afternoon. May 2, from the 
Congregational church, and Dr. Daggett preached a sermon 
from a favorite text of grandfather's, "I shall die in my nest." 
James and John came and as we stood with dear grand- 
mother and all the others around his open grave and heard 
Dr. Daggett say in his beautiful sympathetic voice, "Earth 
to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," we felt that we were 
losing our best friend; but he told us that we must live for 
grandmother and so we will. 

The next Sabbath, Anna and I were called out of church 
by a messenger, who said that grandmother was taken sud- 
denly ill and was dying. When we reached the house at- 
tendants were all about her administering restoratives, but 
told us she was rapidly sinking. I asked if I might speak to 
her and was reluctantly permitted, as they thought best not 
to disturb her. I sat down by her and with tearful voice 
said, "Grandmother, don't you know that grandfather said 
we were to care for you and you were to care for us and if 
you die we cannot do as grandfather said?" She opened 
her eyes and looked at me and said quietly, "Dry your eyes, 
child, I shall not die to-day or to-morrow." She seems well 
now. 

Inscribed in my diary: 
"They are passing away, they are passing away. 
Not only the young, but the aged and grey. 
Their places are vacant, no longer we see 
The arm chair in waiting, as it used to be. 

78 



The hat and the coat, all removed from the nail. 
Where for years they have hung, every day without fail. 
The shoes and the shppers are needed no more. 
Nor kept ready vs^aitmg, as they were of yore. 
The desk which he stood at m manhood's fresh prime, 
Which now shows the marks of the finger of time. 
The bright well worn keys, which were childhood's delight 
Unlocking the treasures kept hidden from sight. 
These now, are mementoes of him who has passed. 
Who stands there no longer, as we saw him last. 
Other hands turn the keys, as he did, before. 
Other eyes will his secrets, if any, explore. 
The step once elastic, but feeble of late. 
No longer we watch for, through door way or gate. 
Though often we turn, half expecting to see. 
The loved one approaching, but ah! 'tis not he 
We miss him at all times, at morn when we meet. 
For the social repast, there is one vacant seat. 
At noon, and at night, at the hour of prayer. 
Our hearts fill with sadness, one voice is not there. 
Yet not without hope, his departure we mourn. 
In faith and in trust, all our sorrows are borne. 
Borne upward to Him who in kindness and love 
Sends earthly afflictions to draw us above. 
Thus hoping and trusting, rejoicing, we'll go. 
Both upward and onward, through weal and through woe 
'Till all of life's changes and conflicts are past 
Beyond the dark river, to meet him at last." 

1fn /©emoriam 

Thomas Beals died in Canandaigua, N. Y., on Saturday, 
April 30th, 1864, in the 81st year of his age. Mr. Beals 
was born in Boston, Mass., November 13, 1783. 

He came to this village in October, 1803, only 14 years 
after the first settlement of the place. He was married in 
March, 1805, to Abigail Field, sister of the first pastor of 
the Congregational church here. Her family, in several of its 
branches, have since been distinguished in the ministry, the 
legal profession, and in commercial enterprise. 

79 



Living to a good old age, and well known as one of our 
most wealthy and respected citizens, Mr. Beals is another 
added to the many examples of successful men who, by 
energy and mdustry, have made their own fortune. 

On coming to this village, he was teaching in the Academy 
for a time, and afterward entered into mercantile business, in 
which he had his share of vicissitude. When the Ontario 
Savings Bank was established, 1832, he became the treas- 
urer, and managed it successfully till the institution ceased, 
in 1835, with its withdrawal. In the meantime, he con- 
ducted, also a banking business of his own, and this was 
continued until a week previous to his death, when he for- 
mally withdrew, though for the last five years devolving its 
more active duties upon his son. 

As a banker, his sagacity and fidelity won for him the 
confidence and respect of all classes of persons in this com- 
munity. The business portion of our village is very much 
indebted to his enterprise for the eligible structures he built 
that have more than made good the loses sustained by fires. 
More than fifty years ago he was actively concerned in the 
building of the Congregational church, and also superintended 
the erection of the county jail and almshouse ; for many years 
a trustee of Canandaigua Academy, and trustee and treas- 
urer of the Congregational church. At the time of his death 
he and his wife, who survives him, were the oldest members 
of the church, having united with it in I 807, only eight years 
after its organization. Until hindered by the infirmities of 
age, he was a constant attendant of its services, and ever 
devoutly maintained the worship of God in his family. No 
person had been more generally known among all classes of 
our citizens. Whether at home or abroad he could not fail 
to be remarked for his gravity and dignity. His character 
was original, independent, and his manners remarkable for 
a dignified courtesy. Our citizens were familiar with his 
brief, emphatic answers with the wave of his hand. He was 
fond of books, a great reader, collected a valuable number 
of volumes, and was happy in the use of language both in 
writing and conversation. In many unusual ways he often 
showed his kind consideration for the poor and afflicted, and 
many persons hearing of his death gratefully recollect in- 
stances, not known to others, of his seasonable kindness to 

80 



them in trouble. In his charities he often studied conceal- 
ment as carefully as others court display. His marked in- 
dividuality of character and deportment, together with his 
shrewd discernment and active habits, could not fail to leave 
a distinct impression on the minds of all. 

For more than sixty years he transacted business in one 
place here, and his long life thus teaches more than one gen- 
eration the value of sobriety, diligence, fidelity and usefulness. 

In his last illness he remarked to a friend that he always 
loved Canandaigua; had done several things for its pros- 
perity, and had intended to do more. He had known his 
measure of affliction; only four of eleven children survive him, 
but children and children's children ministered to the com- 
fort of his last days. Notwithstanding his years and infirm- 
ities he was able to visit New York, returning 1 8th April 
quite unwell, but not immediately expecting a fatal termina- 
tion. As the final event drew near, he seemed happily pre- 
pared to meet it. He conversed freely with his friends and 
neighbors m a softened and benignant spirit, at once receiving 
and imparting benedictions. His end seemed to realize his 
favorite citation from Job: "I shall die in my nest." 

His funeral was attended on Monday in the Congrega- 
tional church by a large assembly. Dr. Daggett, the pastor, 
officiating on the occasion. — Written by Dr. O. E. Daggett 
in 1864. 

June 23, 1864. — Anna graduated last Thursday, June 
1 6, and was valedictorian of her class. There were eleven 
girls in the class, Ritie Tyler, Mary Antes, Jennie Robinson, 
Hattie Paddock, Lillie Masters, Abbie Hills, Miss McNair, 
Miss Pardee and Miss Palmer, Miss Jasper and Anna. The 
subject of her essay was, "The Last Time." I will copy an 
account of the exercises as they appeared in this week's vil- 
lage paper. Everyone thinks it was written by Mr. E. M. 
Morse. 

Mr. Editor: 

Less than a century ago I was traveling through this en- 
chanted region and accidentally heard that it was commence- 
ment week at the seminary. I went. My venerable appear- 

81 



ance seemed to command respect and I received many atten- 
tions. I presented my snowy head and patriarchal beard at 
the doors of the sacred institution and was admitted. I heard 
all the classes, primary, secondary, tertiary, et cetera. All 
went merry as a marriage bell. Thursday was the great day. 
I made vast preparation. I rose early, dressed with much 
care. I affectionately pressed the hands of my two landlords 
and left. When I arrived at the seminary I saw at a glance 
that it was a place where true merit was appreciated. I was 
invited to a seat among the dignitaries, but declined. I am 
a modest man, I always was. I recognized the benign Prin- 
cipals of the school. You can find no better principles m 
the state than in Ontario Female Seminary. After the report 
of the committee, a very lovely young lady arose and saluted 
us in Latin. I looked very wise, I always do. So did every- 
body. We all understood it. As she proceeded, I thought 
the grand old Roman tongue had never sounded so musically 
as when she pronounced the decree, "Richmond dilenda est," 
we all hoped it might be prophetic. Then followed the essays 
of the other young ladies and then every one waited anxiously 
for "The Last Time." At last it came. The story was 
beautifully told, the adieux were tenderly spoken. We saw 
the withered flowers of early years scattered along the aca- 
demic ways, and the golden fruit of scholarly culture ripen- 
ing in the gardens of the future. Enchanted by the sorrowful 
eloquence, bewildered by the melancholy brilliancy, I sent 
a rosebud to the charming valedictorian and wandered out 
into the grounds. I went to the concert in the evening and 
was pleased and delighted. So was everybody. I shall 
return next year unless the gout carries me off. I hope I 
shall hear just such beautiful music, see just such beautiful 
faces and dine at the same excellent hotel. — Senex. 

Anna closed her valedictory with these words: 

"May we meet at one gate when all's over. 
The ways they are many and wide. 
And seldom are two ways the same. 

Side by side, may we stand. 
At the same little door, when all's done. 
The ways, they are many. 
The end it is one." 

82 



April, 1865. — What a month this has been. On the 
sixth of April, Governor Fenton issued this proclamation: 
"Richmond has fallen. The wicked men who governed the 
so-called Confederate States have f^ed their capital, shorn of 
their power and influence. The rebel armies have been de- 
feated, broken and scattered. Victory everywhere attends 
our banners and our armies and we are rapidly moving to 
the closing scenes of the war. Through the self-sacrifice and 
heroic devotion of our soldiers, the life of the republic has 
been saved and the American Union preserved. I, Reuben 
E. Fenton, governor of the .state of New York, do designate 
Friday, the 14th of April, the day appointed for the cere- 
mony of raising the United States flag on Fort Sumter, as a 
day of thanksgiving, prayer and praise, to Almighty God, 
for the signal blessings we have received at His hands." 

On the 1 4th of April, this day appointed for thanksgiving 
for Union victories, our dear president, Abraham Lincoln, 
was assassinated, and on the 1 9th 
of April there were union religious 
services held in the Congregational 
church for the funeral of our late la- 
mented president. All places of 
business were closed and the bells 
of the village churches tolled from 
half past ten till eleven o'clock. 

I don't think I shall keep a diary 
any more, only occasionally jot down 
things of importance. Mr. Noah T. 
Clarke's brother got possession of my 
little diary in some way one day and 
when he returned it I found written 
scription to the diary : 

"You'd scarce expect a volume of my size, 
To hold so much that's beautiful and wise. 
And though the heartless world might call me cheap 
Yet from my pages some much joy shall reap, 
As monstrous oaks from little acorns grow. 
And kindly shelter all who toil below. 
So my future greatness and the good I do 
Shall bless, if not the world, at least a few." 

83 




"Mr. Noah T. Clarke's 
brother and I" 

on the flyleaf this in- 



I think I will close my old journal with the mottoes which 
I find upon an old well worn writing book which Anna used 
for jotting down her youthful deeds. On the cover I find 
inscribed, "Try to be somebody, " and on the back of the 
same book, as if trying to console herself for unexpected 
achievement which she could not prevent, "Some must be 
great!" 

London, August 8, 1872. — John sent for Aunt Ann 
Field and James and me to come to England to visit him and 
we have been here nearly a month. To-day we heard by 
cable the sad news that our dear grandmother is dead. It 
does not seem possible that we shall never see her again on 
this earth. She took such an interest in our journey and just 
as we started I put my dear little Abigail Beals Clarke in her 
lap to receive her parting blessing. As we left the house she 
sat at the front window and saw us go and smiled her fare- 
well. Little did I dream that it was our last look on earth 
of her sweet face. 

August 20. — Anna has written how often she prayed 
that "He who holds the winds in his fist and the waters in the 
hollow of his hands, would care for 
us and bring us to our desired 
haven." She had received one let- 
ter, telling of our safe arrival and 
how much we enjoyed going about 
London, when she was suddenly 
taken ill and Dr. Hayes said she 
could never recover. Anna's letter 
came, after ten days, telling us all 
the sad news and how grandmother 
looked out of the window the last 
night before she was taken ill and 
Dr. Hayes up at the moon and stars and said 

how beautiful they were. Anna says, "How can I ever 
write it? Our dear little grandmother died on my bed to- 
day." 




84 



From the New York Evangelist of August 15, 1872: 
"Died, at Canandaigua, N. Y., August 15, 1872, Mrs. 
Abigail Field Beals, widow of Thomas Beals, in the 89th 
year of her age. Mrs. Beals, whose maiden name was 
Field, was born in Madison, Conn., April 7, 1 784. She 
was a sister of Rev. David Dudley Field, D. D., of Stock- 
bridge, Mass., and of Rev. Timothy Field, first pastor of 
the Congregational church of Canandaigua. She came to 
Canandaigua with her brother, Timothy, in 1 800. In 
1805 she was married to Thomas Beals, Esq., with whom 
she lived nearly sixty years, until he fell asleep. They had 
eleven children, of whom only four survive. In 1807 she 
and her husband united with the Congregational church, of 
which they were ever liberal and faithful supporters. Mrs. 
Beals loved the good old ways and kept her house in the 
simple and substantial style of the past. She herself be- 
longed to an age of which she was the last. With great 
dignity and courtesy of manner which repelled too much 
familiarity, she combined a sweet and winning grace, which 
attracted all to her, so that the youth, while they would al- 
most involuntarily 'rise up before her,' yet loved to be in her 
presence and called her blessed. She possessed in a rare 
degree the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit and lived in 
an atmosphere of love and peace. Her home and room were 
to her children and her children's children what Jerusalem 
was to the saints of old. There they loved to resort and the 
saddest thing in her death is the sundering of that tie which 
bound so many generations together. She never ceased to 
take a deep interest in the prosperity of the beautiful village 
of which she and her husband were the pioneers and for 
which they did so much and in the church of which she was 
the oldest member. Her mind retained its activity to the 
last and her heart was warm in sympathy with every good 
work. While she was well informed in all current events, 
she most delighted in whatever concerned the Kingdom. Her 
Bible and religious books were her constant companions and 
her conversation told much of her better thoughts, which 
were in Heaven. Living so that those who knew her never 
saw in her anything but fitness for Heaven, she patiently 
awaited the Master's call and went down to her grave in a 
full age like a shock of corn fully ripe that cometh in its 
season." 

85 








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